


One Night With The Professor

by PrinceofDarkness15



Category: Midnight Special (2016), Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Consensual Sex, Cunnilingus, F/M, Falling In Love, Fluff and Angst, Happy Ending, Loss of Virginity, Oral Sex, Professor Sevier, Secret Relationship, Teacher-Student Relationship, Touch-Starved, Unexpected Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-12
Updated: 2020-12-29
Packaged: 2021-03-11 04:55:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 18
Words: 54,235
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28019613
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PrinceofDarkness15/pseuds/PrinceofDarkness15
Relationships: Rey (Star Wars)/Paul Sevier
Comments: 53
Kudos: 60
Collections: Finished Works





	1. Chapter 1

REY JOHNSON

Fuck, I forgot the umbrella.

I remembered a backup battery charger, lipstick, condoms, my passport, a disposable toothbrush, and an appropriate amount of petty cash in case of emergency. I spent the last few hours perfecting my hair and make into a look that proclaimed the perfect blend of sexual and social experience. 

I researched my route and destination and reviewed my notes for the plan. I was prepared for every single contingency---except the most obvious one, which that it rains a lot in England sometimes. Okay, a lot of times. 

It rains in England _a lot of times._ And I forgot the damn umbrella in my hotel room. I squint up at the street sign on the building next to me and then back down to my phone, trying to get my bearings.

Unfortunately, the rain has made it nearly impossible to view the app on my screen, and even more unfortunately, I'm certain I've never come across this street in all my planning and preparation, which means I'm definitely lost--although it's hard to tell, given how London streets rename themselves at bafflingly random intervals.

And while it's I'm standing there trying to rub my rain-spattered screen on my equally rain-splattered dress that the silver drizzle decides to become a sudden downpour, darkening the already dim and soaking through my dress and hair in a matter of seconds.

"Shit!" I mutter, cupping a hand over my eyes, trying to peer through the chilling curtain of rain. I can't eve see across the bloody street, much less try to get my bearings. "Shit, shit, shit!"

A black cab hisses by, sending a wave of water up and over my only pair of high heels---bought specially for tonight and the plan--and it's the fucking last straw. 

Screw getting my bearings. I just want to get _dry._ I start walking, my heels _squelch-squelching_ as I go, and in a fit of pique, I yank them off my feet and start jogging barefoot down the slick sidewalk, wondering how my perfectly orchestrated agenda got so off-kilter. When my father hand arranged for me to spend the entire summer with an old friend from my primary-school days as a research assistant, I was beyond excited.

An entire summer in the English countryside cataloging old books and annotating metadata? Basically paradise for me. 

But my real excitement came when I realized I'd have a night alone in London before I went to Professor Sevier's house. A single night in one of the best cities in the world to fix a very serious problem of mine. 

I, Rey Johnson, twenty-two years old and soon-to-be-graduate student, am a virgin. And that is just no longer acceptable. I'm so sick and tired of ending my nights with a skinny margarita and a vibrator. I'm tired of dates that go nowhere, tired of coming home alone, tired of lying in bed with a hollow _ache_ that no amount of battery power can massage away. 

And it was as I was poring over my acceptance letter for library school that I realized I've become that silly old stereotype: the spinster librarian. The virgin nerd. Ugh. 

It's so not _fair._ I never asked to be a virgin at twenty-two! I never asked to be a spinster! All I ever asked for was a super cute guy with a willing penis. Okay, well, and a college education---preferably graduate level or higher, that is. 

And a good paying job--preferably in academia or a related field. And an extensive shared list of common interests---including, but not limited to, modern literature, premodern literature, postmodern literature, Tolkien marginalia, crossword puzzles, animals, coffee, travel to places where druids sacrificed virgins, and variations of fruit pie.

Okay, so maybe, my standards were a little high. I started the plan the way I start everything---with a trip to the library.

I outlined objectives, decided on my research methodology, and created myself a timeline. I devoured books, articles, studies, and anecdotal data about how to get over my hymen-hurdle, and after all that, I came to a certain conclusion. I'd been going about this all wrong.

Sex is supposed to be spontaneous, unforced, mutually initiated. Now, I can't plan my way into someone's pants...but I _can_ plan the perfect environment to facilitate depantsing. 

So when Dad surprised me with the research vacation, I knew this one night in London was my chance to find the perfect depantsing environment. Except now, it's raining--no wait, monsooning and I'm lost and barefoot and the plan gas quickly unraveled into a wet, chilly disaster. _Okay, Rey, focus._ There was a tube station marked on my phone's map before the water had made it totally impossible to navigate--maybe it's just past the next cross street?

I'll duck inside, out of the rain, get my phone working again, and think of my next steps. And check my makeup. I only have tonight, after all, and I'm not ready to give up, umbrella or not. 

I pick up my jog, my head bent down to shield my eyes from the worst of the rain, the sopping-wet hem of my dress slapping and sticking around my thighs, when I collide with a firm chest and wheeze out of an oof. Something resembling a grunt comes from the chest. 

From him. Warm hands immediately come up to my elbows to steady me, and I look up into the pale face marked by darkly slashed eyebrows, high-cheekbones, and a squared, clean-shave jaw. His eyes in the rainy night seem like every kind of color, both light and dark, brown and green, and they're framed by the longest sultriest lashes that I've ever seen on a man.

But it's his mouth that fascinates me the most---slightly too wide and slightly too thin but hauntingly pretty, with perfectly formed peaks at his upper lip and a tantalizing hint of fullness to his lower one.

Rain drips from his cheeks and the longish ends of his dark hair to catch along the sharp edges of his lips and father in the tempting bow of his philtrum.

And with a sudden illicit thrill, I realize that I want to lick the rainwater off of those lips. I want to kiss them until they're warm and soft under my own. I want to feel the shape of his mouth under mine, murmuring my name---except....

That perfect, rain-slicked mouth is currently creased in a rather harsh, unhappy scowl. 


	2. Chapter 2

PAUL SEVIER

She's shivering. 

It takes me a moment to notice, as I'm still processing how someone emerged out of this tempest right in front of me. I'm also still processing how this someone in question is a creature made of pale skin, dark hair, and a sinfully red and lush mouth.

Like a vampiress straight from a storybook but with the most incongruously innocent eyes that I've ever seen. She's also young, drenched down to the bone, and utterly, utterly inappropriately dressed for a night like this. 

"Excuse me, but why aren't you a coat?" I demand over the roar of the rain, and her gaze blinks up at me---which is when I realize that she's been staring at my mouth. A sudden kick of heat goes straight down to my cock. Although, it's hard, I choose to ignore it. "And why are you barefoot?"

Her eyes flick back to my frowning mouth, and her own mouth parts ever so slightly, as if my bad-tempered scowl fascinates her rather than scares her. Her tongue darts over her lower lip, licking away a bead of rainwater that settled over her fire-engine-red lipstick, and I find that I want her to do it again. And again. And again. 

I could stand here and watch her licking rain off her lips for the rest of my life. 

"I-I'm sorry, but I'm looking for the Goose and Gander pub," she finally offers. 

It's hard to hear her over the rain, and yet even with the whoosh and churr of the torrent, I can hear her accent. Broad and wide and a little flat, a true-Londoner, unlike myself who is promotes more of an American television style. 

After six-years of living in this beautiful country, the accent of the British people still manages to find a way to astound me, but with her, and the innocent nature of her tone---it thrills me and takes me to all new and exciting heights. I'm eager to hear her speak again. 

I know exactly where the Goose and Gander is. I just came from there, actually having endured a meal deconstructed into various mason jars and served on a wooden plank for the sake of seeing some friends of mine. 

But I'd drawn the line at overpriced cocktails decanted into chemistry beakers and opted to go back to my flat instead. 

Which is where I want to be---in my dry bed, with dry clothes and dry blankets and a good-dry book---not standing in the drenching, chilly rain with a barefoot Brit. Not matter how red her lips are. Or how enticingly her wet dress clings to her frame. What baffles me even more is she's from this country and doesn't even know where a famous local pub is? _Hmm, must've grown up more in the country than in the city._

I scowl at her again. "It's back that way," I say, pointing behind me. "Just around the corner."

"What?" she asks, clearly unable to hear me.

"I said that it's back---oh, fuck it," I mutter, taking her by the elbow and yanking her into the deep doorway of a closed shop. 

The absence of the rain is almost as shocking as the presence of it, although it still rushes down next to us in a dull, silver roar. 

"It's just past the corner there," I say again, and in the sheltered cove of the doorway, she can finally hear my words. "Left at the lights, then just a street down."

"Oh, good," she says, looking genuinely pleased. 

And also genuinely cold. Goosebumps pebble her bare arms and chest, and I make no valiant effort not to notice her nipples bunched tight underneath her dress. A very, valiant effort. I fail, of course. 

Her teeth chatter as she says, "Th-Thank you! My phone wouldn't work in the rain, and I thought I had memorized the way, but it all looked different once I actually got here, and then the rain made it so hard to see---" Her own shivers break apart her words, and for some reason this makes me unaccountably annoyed.

"Here, take this," I say gruffly, shrugging out of my jacket and putting it over her shoulders. 

She's flapping a hand in protect, but her hand stills just as soon as the dry, warm interior of the jacket touches her shoulders. She practically folds herself into the jacket then, doing this thing where she rubs her cheek against the collar, and I know it's to get dry--- _I know that_ \--but fuck if it doesn't look like she's nuzzling into it. Like a kitten against the warm palm of it's owner. 

"Thank you," says the girl, her eyes wide pools of deep hazel. 

I noticed with a strange curl of satisfaction that she's not shivering as hard now. "Why don't you have a jacket?" I demand of her again, knowing that I sound surly but refusing to care.

Everyone else in my life has practically written me off as a miserable bastard and they ignore me as such---this girl might as well learn it too. 

At that, her mouth forms into a rather defensive little moue. "But it's _June,_ " she says. "I shouldn't even need a jacket in _June."_

I stare down at her like she's fucking insane, which maybe in my fault, she is. "And do you care to explain the bare feet or do you have a response ready for that one too?"

"My feet got wet," she says, as if this is an entirely adequate explanation. "I didn't like the feel of it---" 

"You do realize they've gotten even wetter without shoes."

"It's better this way," she insists, waving her shoes at me. 

Once I see them, I have to agree with her. I don't see how anyone could walk in those across the width of the shoe shop, much less along slippery, uneven pavement. 

"Well, I hope whoever you're meeting sends you home in a taxi," I mutter.

"Oh, I'm not meeting anyone," she says.

"What?" 

She reaches up to brush a wet strand of hair off her cheek, but I beat her to it. I don't know why, but it's instinctive, almost like breathing, like blinking. Touching her. My fingertips linger on her cheek after I brush the hair aside, but she stares up at me with something too close to trust. I immediately drop my hand.

"I only have one night in London," she says, all the trust and big-eyed nuzzling replaced by something matter-of-fact and utterly practical. "And I spent days researching where to go for a drink tonight. It had to be within walking distance of my hotel, it had to be several five-star reviews on multiple restaurant rating sites, and it had to be established enough to have regulars but new enough to be trendy. The Goose and Gander met all of those requirements."

Well, that's where research will most certainly get you. An obnoxious hipster cave of Edison bulbs and reclaimed wood. 

"And why that specific criteria?" I ask, but I'm already peering back out into the rain, wondering if its let up enough that I can let this crazy, shivering girl be on her way.

And get back to my night. Yes, _my_ night. My night in a dry bed with my book...alone. Somehow it doesn't sound as appetizing as it did just a few minutes ago before I ran into her. 

"Oh," she chirps, like she's really pleased that I asked. "I just wanted to find a man to sleep with."

It takes a moment for her words to unfold in my brain, and I'm still staring at the rain when her meaning becomes evidently clear. Did she really just say what I think she did? An unpleasant bolt of _something_ hits me with a muffled dull thud and I realize quickly that even as a perfect stranger I don't like the sound of that at all. 

My head swivels slowly back so that I can look at her. "Excuse me?"

Her face is animated now, all red lips and high brows and dark lashes in the shadowed, rainy night. "Well, I have a plan, and I think that it's a very good plan, but unfortunately, my circumstances are narrowed to this one night in particular--" 

"A _plan._ "

She nods, that pleased look again, like I'm her star pupil. Fuck that. I'm the professor here, and I have the sudden urge to tell her so. To press her up against the wall and put my lips to her ear and murmur all the ways she'll respect my authority and experience. 

My cock responds to the image, straining full and heavy at the thought of touching her. Teaching her. Punishing her. 

"You see," she says, totally oblivious to the deviant lust pounding through me in that exact moment. "I really need a man with a willing penis---or I suppose I should say a willing man with a penis, but when I say it like that, it sounds very dismissive of non---you're scowling at me again."

She's right. "So what you're saying is that you have a plan to go to a place that you've never been, in a city, you've hardly visited in how many years, to find a man that you've never met in your life in the hopes that he will do one thing, and that is to fuck you? Is that what I'm to understand?"

My voice is frigid, bordering on cruel, and I see her blanch. I desire nothing more than to pull her side and screaming at the top of my lungs: WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU?! ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR GODDAMNED MIND?!

"Well, that's very judgmental of you to say," she scolds, but I'm not to be scolded here. Anyone else would know better than to pull that shit on me. 

Not right now, because I do the scolding here, I make the rules, and the sooner she fucking learns that, the better off. Wait, no, what the hell am I even thinking? She's not going to learn anything from me. I'm not going to teach her anything. I'm not even going to spend another ten minutes with this deranged bedraggled girl. We're complete strangers, I hope she understands that? I don't know her and she doesn't know me. 

Even if she has the kind of long, thick hair that begs to be wrapped around a fist and pulled. Even if she has a rain-chilled body just crying to be loved warm again.

Even if she has the kind of plush red lips designed to drive men mad. But I've been down this road once before, and I know what lies at the other end of it. Bitter memories and a life left in pieces. No, never again.

"I'm judgmental because it's an idiotic idea first and foremost," I reply in a sharp voice. "Do you have any idea how unsafe that is? How utterly foolish it sounds coming out of your mouth?"

Even in the dark, I see how heat glints in her eyes, and she sticks a finger in my chest as if she's about to deliver me a scathing lecture. As she does, her arm leaves the warm confines of my jacket and reveals a delicate wrist circled with a thing band of leather. A watch. 

I don't know why that's the thing that does it, but something shears off inside my mind, sending my control bumping and careening off the tracks. 

"Where's your hotel?" I ask her before she can even start in on whatever it was that she was about to say to me.

Her brows pull together and her mouth closes. Opens again. "Why?" she asks suspiciously. 

"Because I'm taking you back there right now."

"Why?" she asks, genuinely confused right now by my reply. 

"Because there's no way in hell that I'm letting you prance off to a bar to find some random stranger to fuck you," I say. "Besides, how do you think I would feel waking up to the morning news to find out that your body has been discovered lying in a random guy's hotel room or--or even dumped somewhere like garbage?"

And I give her a brief once-over, my eyes tracing where the fabric of her dress clings to her breasts and her soft belly, and her achingly shaped hips.

There are no secrets through that wet fabric, and those shockingly abundant curves are on clear display for anyone with eyes. For the undoubtedly many willing penises back at the pub. The thought makes my chest tighten with something uncivilized and jealous.

"And especially not looking like _that,_ " I add. 

Her cheeks flush dark enough that it's visible even in the night shadows, and I realize too late she thinks that I'm mocking her, not warning her. 

Fine. So be it. If that's what it takes to save her from the greedy assholes at the Goose and Gander, then I'll pay the price. "So, what hotel?" I repeat.

She worries her bottom lip between her teeth, and that simple act alone has my erection throbbing against the damp fabric of my jeans. begging to be let free, begging to come out to play. And oh, how it could play along the softness of her mouth and over the wet pink of her tongue. How rude and rough it would look against the overflowing handfuls of her tits....

"The Lancaster," she says finally. 

"Wait, what did you just say?"

"I said I'm staying at the Lancaster Hotel," she answers again.

"My flat is right next to the Lancaster," I say before I can stop myself, and then horror curls through my chest.

She's close. Too close. Too real. Too.... _possible. Would it really be so bad?_ a tiny voice whispers in my mind.. _.just one night with a girl that you'll never have to see again?_ Yes, goddammit. Yes, it would.

Meanwhile, the girl seems to be having some sort of insight. Some sort of wild epiphany. "You," she says slowly.

"What?" 

"You!" Her entire face lightens up immediately. "You could be the one!"

I stare at her like she's a crazy person---and maybe she is. "You're joking, right? _Please,_ tell me you're just pulling my leg here."

She's far too excited to catch on to the rhetorical nature of my statement, already bouncing on the balls of her feet. She's so short that even on her tiptoes, the top of her head barely clears my chin.

"I'm not joking! It's absolutely perfect, don't you see? You're home is right next to my hotel! You can have sex with me and then just go right back to your flat afterwards!" She beams up me, as if expecting some kind of approbation for working out this sincere problem of hers.

"You cannot be serious?" I say in something very close to a stammer, which really pisses me off.

I'm not uncertain, I know how I feel about everything always, and I know how I feel about this: this girl is fucking crazy, mad, loopy, whatever you want to call it and I'm leaving.

"I am _dead_ serious," she says, brow furrowed, as if puzzled as to why that would even occur to me. "I would just like to have sex with someone tonight, and you're hand and you're already here."

And that's when I realize she's not mad. She's something, much, much worse---she's innocent. And willing. I turn to go, and she catches hold of my arm, her little watch flashing in the shimmering glow of the streetlights. A stupid little watch that I bet she puts on every single morning so she won't be late for whatever burlesque antics she has devised for that day.

I bet she's on time for everything. I bet she's early to every class or meeting or shift, sitting with a straight back and with a pencil caught between her teeth, a spare pencil speared through a bun of soft, glossy hair....

 _Fuck me._ I pull free of her arm. "You can keep the jacket," I mutter, ducking back into the rain and away from this creature who seems to be built out of my most shameful temptations, every inch of me protesting at the distance between us, at pulling way from her.

But there's no other way. For the sake of her soul and mine, I should stay far away from her and her little watch and her wanton body with it's big, soft curves and needy nipples.

The chilly rain sluicing down is a relief, soaking me straight through without my jacket and quelling the heat inside my blood just enough so that I can think properly again. So I can remember the life I had built, free of temptations, free of chaos, free of sin. 

I take a deep, rainy breath. It's going to be okay. I was tested and came up with full marks. And now to my reward, which is a chaos-free night. Alone. 

Fuck, what cold comfort that sounded like. Comfort even colder than the rain soaking me through. But the cost of giving into my urges would make my life even colder still. 

"You're not married are you?" a voice comes from beside me. I look over at the girl following me. She peers closely at me through the rain. "Girlfriend? Boyfriend? Wife?"

"I'm not married, and I'm not seeing anyone. _Not that it matters or is any of your business."_

I try to walk faster, shoving my hands in my pockets and ducking my head from the rain, bit she keeps up, nearly jogging at my side now. My jacket hands open enough that I can see what effect jogging has on the glistening rounds of her breasts peeking up over her bodice. Jesus Christ.

"I'm not either," she says. "Married or dating anyone, that is."

"Congrats, but, it doesn't matter."

"Do you think I'm pretty enough to have sex with?" she says, her voice growing louder as she bus sloshes by.

"What?"

"I mean, if you're not attracted to me, I totally understand." She hopes over a puddle in an expedient, unself-conscious move that almost makes me smile. "Most men aren't attracted to me. That's why I had to come all the way to London to..." She trails off, clutching the jacket tighter around her now. "Anyway," she continues in a defeated voice. "I'd understand if you weren't"

That lonely note in her voice draws me up short, even though the safety of our hotel shimmers mirage-sweet just across the road. 

I slowly turn to her in the rain. "You think that I'm not attracted to you?"

"Well, most other guys---"

"I'm not like most other _guys_ ," I growl, and her lower lip goes between her teeth again. 

But not like in fear like it should, but in interest in desire. She's too innocent by far and that is not a good thing to be when around me.

********

"You think men don't want you?" I ask in a low voice, taking a step forward. 

She watches me with an eager temptation, and it makes me harder than I ever thought possible. I'm literally about to bust out at the same of my pants---and that's not fucking joke.

"Everything about your body reminds a man of fucking. Your tits, your mouth, those ridiculous hips. Even those big hazel eyes of your makes a man wonder what they'd look like peering up at him with you down on your knees. Looking up at him over your shoulder as he bends you over his desk."

I stop abruptly, my words getting too personal, too tailored to my own fucked-up needs. She releases that lower lip, and I'm nearly undone by how open she looks, how vulnerable. I want to sweep her into my arms and cover all that vulnerability with my body--protect her from the world even as I refuse to protect her from myself. 

_Get a fucking grip here, Paul. This can't happen._ But what if it could? I won't ever had to see this girl ever gain after tonight. She's not my student. 

_She's not Jyn,_ the little voice inside my head reminds me. She can't hurt you. 

"Well, then it's quite simple," the girl says, as if she can read my thoughts. "If you're attracted to my body and you're unattached---"

"It's a bit more complicated than that," I say, pushing past her to splash my way to the hotel.

She has no fucking idea how complicated it really is. She has no idea how _wrong._ But like before, she continues to follow me. Jeez, this girl is really persistent. 

"Please. I promise I'm not crazy. I'm just tired of---" She stops, seems to change her words. "Tired of not having sex. _Please."_

"It's for your own good," I mutter, even though my entire body is swirling with the need to give her what's _actually_ for her own good, which is her over my lap, legs kicking adorably, as I redden her ass with my twitchy palm. 

I'm so hard now. Hard enough that it must be plain obvious. Hard enough to be past caring. Hard enough that the minute I slip inside my flat, I'm going to have a hand braced on the door while the other fists my cock. 

"How the hell do you know what's for my own good?" the girl asks, and it's the way she asks that makes my steps falter. 

She doesn't demand it like most women would, and she doesn't deny that I might. That I _might_ know what's for her own good and that I might know it well enough to tell her. No. _No._

"We're not doing this," I tell her as we reach the doors of the Lancaster, and I recognize how ridiculous it is that I'm holding the door open for this woman even as I'm trying to push her way. "You're just going to have to trust me on that."

She steps inside, and it's so bright that my eyes take a moment to adjust. When they do, I see that she's shoving my jacket at me. 

"Here. Thank you for this, and take it back. And for the record, I _don't_ trust you, and why should I? I'm a grown-ass woman and I don't know--and also I've done a lot of research about sex, so I'm pretty sure I know what I'm talking about here."

She's gesturing now, the hand still clutching her shoes waving them around, but I'm not watching the shoes, I'm watching her---the almost embarrassingly generous curves of her. Not embarrassing because of the generosity but because of the near-wantonness of them. The illicit thoughts those curves conjure even fully clothed as she is. 

Of course, fully clothed is a misleading term at the moment, because yes, that little waist and those lavish tits and hips are covered with fabric, but the wet dress clings to every contour and swerve of her body. 

I can even make out the gentle dip of her navel, the place where her thighs meet her body. The sweet bullets of her nipples. 

Even the rest of her body is wanton: the long arch of her neck, still slicked with rain, the exposed square of her shoulders, the long wet hair that waves in the dark webs down her back and over the elegant line of her collarbone. Even her anger feels tempting. Even the cocoon of inexperience around her drives me fucking crazy. Even that goddamn watch of hers is irresistible. 

I take my jacket and start walking to the lift. I can at least walk her to do her door, but in doing so, I have to put some space between us or my skin's literally going to catch fire.

"Please?" she asks one last time. " _Please?_ "

"No." I'm almost to the lift doors now, I'm almost safe. Or rather, she's almost safe.

"Fine, then I'm going to the Goose and Ganger," she says, frustrated. "Or _anywhere._ But I'm not going to give up, not when I only have one night here."

I've already hit the button for the lift by the time she's uttered the words, but it's not too late to spin around and glare down at her. "What the _fuck_ did you just say?" I ask in a low voice.

She's already turning around, and I realize with some mixture of fury, horror, and lust that she actually means it. She's going to go back out into that gale. To find herself another man.

My hand finds her elbow, and I pull her into me with a low, feral growl. "You're not fucking going anywhere. Do you hear me?"

She gives ne a glare as turbulently aroused as my own, pressing her wet curves against me in something between a challenge and a request. 

"Oh yeah, and what exactly are you going to do about it?" she dares.

My cock is a hot bar of steel between us, fussing at the seam of my jeans, and I can't help but press it into her belly. And my mouth is dry, so fucking dry, with wanting her. "Girls who disobey get punished," I warn.

"By you?"

"Yes, by me."

Suddenly, I find that I'm not holding her to me so much as she's holding herself to me, her high heels dropping to the flor in a dull clatter as her fingers find the flats of my chest under my thin sweater.

"Punishing bad girls....is this you being kinky or a serial killer?" she asks, that red mouth curved in what could only be called impertinence. 

I can barely breathe. And I can't even fathom saying the word _kinky_ like she's just said it, like she would say _tall_ or English. Like it's practically nothing. Like it's no big deal. Like she might want it.

All I choke out is a husky, "I'm not a killer."

She has no reason to believe me, no reason to believe I'm safe, which is exactly why I didn't want her trawling for strange men in the middle of London. And all thoughts sizzle and melt away in a searing instant because she's hooked her arms behind my neck and pulled herself up to my mouth.

Because she's kissing me with red, rain-splattered kips. And I'm completely done for. 


	3. Chapter 3

REY JOHNSON

He takes just like fresh mint. Not toothpaste mint, but fresh mint, straight from the garden, herbal and with the tiniest bit of cold sting.

I moan the minute that I taste it, the minute our tongues slide together, and his answering moan has me throwing all lingering doubts into the floor along with my dumb-shoes. I don't care that I don't even know him. All I know is that I want it to be him. Him with his testy refusals. 

Him with his dark threats. Him with those hypnotic eyes that are every color and that mouth shaped somewhere between elegance and cruelty. His hands are spread big and possessive on my back now, keeping me so tight against him that I can feel the heavy ridge of his pants that tells me how much he meant his words from earlier in the rain.

 _Everything about your body reminds a man of fucking._ It's the first time I've ever thought of my body in that way---of sexy instead of heavy, of desirable instead of softly messy.

And I like it. I like how his eyes burned over my curves, as if he were already planning things that would take him straight to hell. _And I want it to be him._

And almost like he reads my mind, he turns us and starts walking me backward into the elevator, pausing only to duck down and grab my shoes. Once we go through the elevator doors, he reaches for my thighs and lifts me up as if I weigh nothing, still kissing me with those soft, minty lips all the while. 

Well, no kiss, really. More like _devour_ \---yeah, that's more like it, as if he hasn't kissed a woman in years--as if he hasn't _touched_ anyone in years. He seems that hungry for it.

But new to sex as I am, I know you don't kiss like him without vast experience, so surely he's not that hard up for it? Surely someone like him, handsome and mysterious and captivating, has someone in his bed every night?

Funny how the observation makes me jealous, given that I don't even know him. I don't even know his name. 

Grateful for the easy, knowledgeable way his hands work my body, pinning me between his leanly muscled frame and the wall of the elevator. But even as I'm jealous for all the experience belied by his capable handling of me, I'm also grateful for it.

Grateful for the expert way he matches our bodies together, sliding me so that my lace-covered pussy grinds over the thick part of him that throbs for me. Grateful for the smooth way he deepens our kiss, exploring my mouth, biting at my lips and my jaw, and leaving me a wriggling, wet mess.

"Which floor?" he growls into my mouth.

"Wh-What?" 

"If we're going to do this, we're going to do this in your room," he says, and it was always my plan to bring someone to my room for safety reasons, so I tell him.

"Nine."

He slams a fist against the wall of buttons, and then he's back to plundering my mouth, not so much coaxing me open as taking what he wants, and God, it's like nothing I ever could have dreamed of. 

I've known lust myself. I've know what it feels like to have my body aching with the need for friction and fullness, but I've never, ever imagined something like _this_. The rush of power and pure biological frenzy of feeling someone _else's_ lust. The way it threads through my own desires like a hot copper wire. The way it makes me want more, more, more. And more. 

I have almost no control over myself in this moment, grinding my needy core against him, rubbing my breasts against his chest, yanking everywhere at his sweater and his firm arms and shoulders and at the wet lengths of his hair---too long to be considered insanely shaggy but long to be anything other than unkempt. 

He lets me pluck and paw at him, and it seems to drive him madder and madder---his kisses growing more and more savage, his grip more merciless, until the elevator doors open and he drops me back down to my feet, yanking me into the hallway before I can even find my balance. 

"Nine thirteen," I manage. fumbling with my purse for my phone as I'm pulled down the hallway and then surfacing with it right before I'm crushed against my door and kissed within an inch of my life. 

"Take a picture of me," he says breathlessly against my lips. 

"I--What?"

He pulls back just enough so that I can see he's dead serious. Those chocolate-brown eyes swirl with something stormy and pained. "Take a picture of me and sent it to someone you trust," 

And then he rattles off a string of numbers on the front of the screen. His birthday. 

"Why?" I ask him again, even through I suspect why. 

"Surely," he says, raising one warm hand to grip my jaw and holds me close for another hard kiss. "with all of your research, I think you know why."

"So that someone knows I'm with you."

"So that you'll be safe," he corrects gently, nipping at my neck and then meeting my gaze. "I don't know if I can ever forgive you for being so careless with yourself."

I laugh---half from his bossy words and half from the new flicker of his tongue along the shell of my ear. "My body is my own to be careless with."

"Not tonight, it isn't," he whispers. "Tonight it's mine. _All_ mine."

I text his picture to a friend of mine, along with his birthday and name---Paul Sevier--and then I use the hotel app on my phone to unlock the door. 

"What's your name?" he asks as we kiss our way into the room. I left a light on when I went out earlier, so I reach to turn it off because sex happens in the dark, I know that much, but he catches my wrist before I do it. "The lights stay on," he rasps. "And I want your name. I told you mine."

That he did, and hell if Paul Sevier doesn't sound so fancy and old-American-ish that I can hardly stand it. Suddenly I'm embarrassed of my own name, which seems to make me all the younger than the ten years I now know separate us.

"Rey," I say, telling him my real name. 

No one calls me that, of course, I've been called more by my nickname, Kira since basically the moment I was born---but I file taxes as Rey, and it does sound a lot more grown-up. Like the kind of name an Paul would be praised with. _Paul and Rey_ sounds perfect. _Paul and Kira_ sounds like a fucking joke.

"Rey," he murmurs as his hands cup my face, his thumbs tracing soft lines along the rises of my cheekbones. "What do you want tonight?"

"I want you to have sex with me."

And that's all he needs me to say. His hands drop to my skirt, and then ruck up the wet fabric easily, hitching it all to my waist, and then he cups my pussy with one elegant hand. "Do you need to be fucked here? Hmm?"

"Yes," I sigh, trying to press into his hand. 

It feels so damn good, so fucking good, and I've never gotten this far....never had only a scrap of lace between my aching emptiness and a man's possessive touch. But then his touch leaves my pussy, and I whimper. He reaches for the zipper of my dress and, with a practiced move, tugs it down. Before I can even fully process what's happening, I'm bared to the waist, with only the thin silk of my bra between my body's secrets and his hungry eyes. 

"But these need me too, don't they?" he says, his hands smoothing over the rounds of my breasts, shaping to their weight and ample size. 

Despite the cold and sharp cast of his mouth and the equally cold and aristocratic cut of his features, there's something almost boyish in his haze as he cups and fondles me. 

Something awed and greedy. He slides the straps of my bra over my shoulders and then peels the damp silk cups from my skin. "Jesus Christ," he mutters to himself as my nipples peck free and my breasts spill over the rest of my cups. "Jesus Christ."

And before I can say anything or even cover myself, like my instincts demand, his mouth is closing warm and wet over the needy tip of one breast, and I let out a noise that's nearly embarrassing in it's shocked honesty. 

It's not the rehearsed coo of a woman in a porn video---it's a noise that comes straight from my belly, a low moan of unfiltered need. I had no earthly idea it could feel so good. No idea.

His mouth is slick and warm, sucking every secret dirty wish of mine right to the surface of my skin as he works me and worries my nipple with rough nips and pulls. I feel the wet response between my legs like nothing I've ever felt before. I mean, wet after a few minutes with battery power, sure, but wet from a stranger's mouth moving hungrily over my breasts?

Wet from the flashing multicolored gaze of a man I don't know as he tears my dress down my hips and then scowls at my exposed form?

"You're so much," he says accusingly. "You're so fucking much."

Hell, I've always known that. I've always been so much. I'm the girl who raises her hand at the end of class because she can't bear for it to end. The girl who does every extra-credit assignment and then asks for more because she wants the teacher to like her. 

I'm curvy and eager and relentlessly energetic, and I've been all those things ever since I can remember. And yet never has being _too much_ sounded like he's making it sound right now. 

As if I'm a treasure and a curse all at once. As if he both loves and hates me. As if I'm killing him simply by being myself and he wouldn't have it any other way. Paul circles me now, like a predator's, like a wolf, and when I move to shift and put my arms over myself in a surge of self-consciousness, his hands are on me again, folding my wrists at the small of my back and locking them there with strong fingers.

"You bad girl," he murmurs softly into my ear, standing behind me so that all I have of him is that deliciously refined American voice and the warm grip of his hand. "Very bad girl."

"I'm not a bad girl," I protest, because his words are hooking somewhere deep inside me, somewhere deep inside the eager teacher's pet that is Rey Johnson.

Too late I remember I'm supposed to be just Rey, someone older and more sophisticated, someone who's been around the block and isn't as eager to be pleased. But it doesn't seem to matter. My eagerness to be a good girl for him seems to gratify, because he bites at my shoulder with a pleased noise. 

"You want to be a good girl for me?" he asks. "You want to make me happy?"

"I do," I breathe. "Oh, I do, I do."

" _Ah,_ you do." An approving growl at my ear. 

I'm then bent over the bed without so much as a warning, the only concession to my comfort is the pause he gives me to turn my head so that I can breathe. 

And then my panties are ripped down to my ankles and done away with. "Red means stop," he says and kicks my legs apart. 

I hold my breath. waiting for it....for something....for fingers or spanking or for him to shove his cock inside me. And oh shit, if he's going to do that, he needs a condom. But just as I'm about to tell him that, something utterly unexpected and utterly magical happens.

He runs his tongue soft and slick through the split between my legs, and I nearly jump from the bed. A stinging slap to my ass makes me freeze automatically. 

"Good girls hold _still,_ " Paul warns from behind me. "And you're _not_ being a good girl right now." 

I can feel the warm breath of his words against my pussy, a lurid reminder that he's able to see and smell and taste a part of me that no one has ever seen or smelled or tasted before, and I can't handle it. I can't even pretend to handle it. I squirm against the bed-sheets. 

"Paul," I moan, and it happens again. 

His tongue. His tongue and his lips and the intimate press of his nose into me, and I could peel apart with embarrassment, but he puts a hand on the small of my back and keeps me bent over the bed as he samples me yet again. I realize then that I'm trapped. Trapped between his hands, which hold me down or spread me open depending on his whim. 

Trapped between the bed and his hungry mouth. Trapped between my embarrassment and just how insanely deliciously it all feels. 

Delicious because he thinks that I'm delicious. Delicious because it's so intimate and wet and hot. Delicious because it's nothing like the familiar massage of my hands or the plastic hum of a vibrator. 

It's human and messy and dirty. It's not the same thing I thought it was at all. It's wild. It's primal. Like a lioness being pinned and bitten by her male. Like a cavewoman being slung over the shoulders of a lusty caveman. 

I thought I knew the boundaries of it. I thought my research would make the act planned and civilized...I _was_ wrong. There's _nothing_ civilized about this at all. 

And despite his expensive sweater and even more expensive accent, there's nothing civilized about Paul at all. "I _fucking_ love the way you taste," he tells me, pulling back to bite at my ass. "Like summer and tart and rich sweetness."

"I--" I have no words for this.

Never in a thousand years when I made my plans and fantasized about finally having sex did I imagine what this would feel like---not just his mouth on my clit, but hearing him talk about my body with such raw pleasure, knowing that my secrets were a secret no longer. And never could I have imagined that he'd sit on the bed and then haul me over his lap like a child, his hand smoothing over the curve of my ass.

I look back at him, and he looks back at me with those uncannily colored eyes. "Read means stop," he repeats. And then he brings his palm down against my ass, and I buck over his lap. "That is for going out along in a strange city," he says as he tucks me even under against his lap.

And he spanks me again. I feel the unbearable sting radiating off my skin like it's been lit completely fire. God, this feels so fucking good. 

"That is for looking for a strange man to fuck you." And then again. "And that is for being so fucking delicious that I couldn't say no when you asked."

I'm breathing hard into the blanket, the skin along my ass and thighs nearly dancing with sparks. There's heal everywhere---heat on my skin, heat deep in my muscles, heat in my belly, and heat between my legs.

I...I had no idea. This definitely was not the plan. The plan never involved _spanking._ It never pain or punishment, and yet....when he soothes the skin with his hand, rubbing gently....when he croons that I'm such a _good girl_ , I'm more alive that I think I've ever felt. 

I'm dizzy with it and drunk with it, and I feel giddy and heady and wild. Like I can do anything and have anything. Have anyone. 

"I liked that," I murmur in disbelief. "I _really_ liked that." 

His hand stops over my ass. "You did?" he asks in nearly as much disbelief.

I realize that he's trembling where he touches me. His hands are shaking, and I can feel the minute shudders chasing up and down his solid body. I suddenly panic that I've done something wrong, that I've accidentally been disgusting by admitting that I liked it, but then he bends over me, pressing his lips to my back.

"Rey," he groans and then bites me. "Where the hell did you come from?"

I don't know, but I'm suddenly encouraged. He's shaking because of _me._ Because I liked what he did to me. I can't separate my enjoyment of it from his enjoyment of it, but maybe I'm not supposed to. Maybe that's the whole point. 

And for once in my life, I'm happy not to overanalyze. Happy to just be in the moment and do something that feels good to me naturally. 

"More?" I ask, batting my eyelashes for good measure. "I know you've spanked me for being a bad girl, but maybe some more just for fun? For the hell of it?"

I don't have to ask him twice. A pleased noise rumbles deep in Paul's chest, and he resumes his work---a bit lighter this time, I notice.

Hard enough to sting but not so hard that it truly hurts me. Soon I'm arching and squeaking with each strike, rocking back into his touch and also trying to press my pussy into the firm length of his thigh. His erection burns at my belly even through his pants, and he's breathing harder than I am--breathing like he's just run a race, like he's pushed himself to the point of complete collapse. And when the collapse comes, it's not his body but his control that fails.

He scoops me up in his arms and tosses me back onto the bed again, slouching over me like a lion in truth.

"Tell me you're wet," he says, lowering his body over mine and taking a nipple into his mouth. "Tell me you need it." He murmurs around my skin, leaving my nipple to kiss the soft skin between my breaths and down the even softer contours of my belly. "Tell me that you can't wait another fucking minute."

His mouth reaches my pussy, and it's like all the fire he'd laid into my backside is now kindling here, here, _here._ And when he slides one long finger inside me, his lips and tongue and teeth all working to worship my clit, I'm done for.

********

Battery power has nothing on this. My back bows completely off the bed as I cry out and grab for him, my fingers threading through his hair as I quiver and shake against his mouth, as my first ever non-solo orgasm tears through me with tidal, elemental power. 

I can feel it everywhere---to the roots of my hair and in the balls of my feet---and as I'm racked with the gorgeous agony of it, he still pleasures me, still kisses and feasts on me like he can't bear to stop. 

And when I finally, finally still against his lips, going from wire-tight to limp and happy, he gives my pussy a final kiss and rises up to his knees, tugging off his sweater and kicking off his shoes and trousers. 

He should look clumsy, pulling off damp clothes, but in that mysterious Paul way, it all looks graceful. Powerful, even. And inch by inch, his body appears before me. His handsomely squared shoulders and deceptively wide chest and a torso ridged with lean muscle and marked with a single line of dark hair trailing down from his naval. 

And then those hips, trim and narrow, the spread of dark hair low, low on his belly, the tops of firm thighs, and then-- _-Jesus, Mary and Joseph._ His cock. 

It flexes as I trace it with my gaze, the veined thickness, the blunt swell of the head, and the proud jut of it's hardness. There's something so potent and arresting about this part of him it's so very male and handsome, and even just looking at it makes my belly churn low with new longing. 

"You want it," Paul says, drawing my gaze up to his. It's not even a question, but I answer him anyway.

"Yes."

He looks down at my pussy, spread and wet, and then up to my face again. I can't read his facial expression, but there's something twisting the sharp corners of his lips and I realize that it's pure excitement. I realize it's glazed fervor. 

He wants me as much as I want him. And God, how that punches me in the gut. 

"Good, because you're going to take it."

"Yes," I murmur breathlessly, nodding up at him.

"The....whole.... _fucking_....thing." 

"Yes," I say breathlessly again. 

"I wear condoms," he informs me, reaching for his wallet. 

"Okay."

"Every single time."

"Okay."

He tears the wrapper open with long fingers, nimble and dexterous in the way that brings to mind writing or piano playing, and then rolls the latex sheath over himself with an ease that both fascinates and frustrates me.

"And I'm on top this time." 

"Okay by me."

And it really is because I'd have no idea what the hell to do if I were on top. And being so exposed---not just with my braless breasts and soft thighs but with my inexperience, with my unpracticed movements....I don't think I'm quite ready for that just yet. Especially not with someone as wickedly sophisticated as Paul. 

"Any other rules you'd like to present to me?" I tease, even though I like the rules he's already given. I've always liked rules, and from him, there's nothing sexier.

"Yes," he says, crawling back between my legs. "Red still means stop."

And then he lays his body over mine, matches the wide crest of him to my cunt's opening, and begins to push his way inside. I arch in a low write, the pressure too much, the bite of pain too real, and for a substantial moment, I think about pushing him away.

I think about saying red. It's one thing to read about the discomfort some women face in their inaugural encounters with penetration, but it's an entirely different thing to feel it. 

It's so unfamiliar, this discomfort. It's so intimate, right at the heart of me, as if I'm being split open by the coolly vicious man above me. _Except he's not vicious at all._ Not really. Even as he spanked me, he soothed me and played with my pussy, and even as he wedges inside me now, he strokes he hair from my face and sucks at my neck.

And the noises, the animal-like noises, words uttered in the most filthy tone possible: _tight, Jesus, tight_ and _goddammit you feel so good_ and _so fucking much, so fucking much._

"I'm going to fuck you," he whispers into my neck as his head drops to the pillow next to mine. He's still only halfway in. "I'm going to fuck you until you're a good girl again."

All of it, all of it, but especially those last words, take the pinch of pain and turn it into something new. Something as good as the good girl that I want to be for him, and instead of pushing him away, my hands wonder down to the tight clench of his ass and coax him in farther. 

Deeper. Until he's seated as deep as a man can go within a woman.

"Paul," I gasp, because he's filling me where I've never been filled, heating me and stretching me and stroking me, and the tip of him is kissing against a part of me I never even knew was there before. "Oh, Paul. It feels---I can't believe how it feels." 

He pulls up and stares down at me, that sharp-tipped mouth pressed into a line and his eyebrows furrowed. "I can't believe how you you feel," he corrects. And then he shakes his head slightly, his mouth twisting in some conversation with himself. "You're not at all what I expected," he says. "You're not at all how you look."

"And how do I look?" I whisper.

He gives me a dark smile and reaches up to run a thumb over my fore-engine red lips and then down over a plump breast. "Like you know everything this is to know about fucking." 

"I don't know anything," I admit. 

It was never the plan to reveal my virginity to my would-be paramour, and it seems strange to tell Paul about it now, when he's already inside me. 

But a big part of me wants to tell him, wants him to know how much I'm trusting him with, how much I need him to continue being his mixture of safe and dangerous. But then I add, "You have to show me. You have to teach me," and his eyes go so dark, so feral, that I decide the conversation can wait until later.

I want him ferocious now. I want him looking like this, all possessed and desperate. "You want me to teach you?" he rasps, moving between my legs again. "You want to be my little student? My little whore?"

 _Holy shit._ I nearly cum from his words alone---from his teacher game, this good-girl game. And still he moves, long and sweet strokes that have my toes curling and my back arching. 

"Good girls cum on the cocks of their teachers give them," Paul says as he fucks me. "You want to be a good girl for me, don't you?"

I nod vehemently. It's all I want, it's all I'll ever want, and I need to be his good girl. I need it like I need air and water and my next breath. "Please," I whimper. "Help me be a good girl for you, please, _please_."

He moves the wide pad of this thumb to my clit between us, rubbing in time to his deep, rolling thrusts, and the orgasms build like nothing I've felt. A runaway train bearing down on me, a wall of sweaty, dirty pleasure---it's so much that I try to move away from it, try to squirm away from under him.

I can't bear it. I know I can't. I'll die if I orgasm, because it's too strong, too fucking string, it will shake the bones right out of my body. 

"Oh no, you don't," Paul murmurs, his body easily chasing mine, this thumb on my swollen pearl all the while. "You give it to me first. You _fucking_ let me have it!"

And I can't resist him---not the thick bar of needy male inside me, not his polished accent, not his still-damp hair tousled around his face. 

Not his savage mouth or his chocolate-brown eyes. He stills me just enough for the climax to nip at my heels, to tackle down, and with a panicked moan, I'm felled by it. I'm slayed by it. It starts in the deepest bit of my belly, right around the wide tip of him, crushing in and then exploding out like an atom bomb, crumpling through me like I'm nothing but paper in a strong fist.

I can feel myself clenching---my belly and my thighs and the inner parts of me---squeezing and clutching at his erection, and he hisses, long and wounded, his hands fisting hard enough in the pillows around my head that I can hear the stress of the fabric.

And I can't speak, I can't ask if his erection is good or bad, but there's something in the rigid tension of his torso, in the strained cords of his neck, that make me think it's good, that he's getting pleasure from my pleasure just as I did from his when he spanked him.

"Dammit," he says through gritted teeth. "Goddammit, I'm gong to---fuck you're making me---Rey---" 

The last comes out as a jagged moan, and then he's up on his knees, his hands curling hard over my hips as he fucks his way through his own climax. 

His eyes flutter closed, so I can watch him in my state of limp stupefaction as he uses my body to his own ends. As he uses my happy pussy to send him over the edge. And then a grunt and the impossible tightening of all those delicious muscles in his arms and chest and belly.

"Fuck," he mumbles, his head dropping down to hang between his shoulders. 

His eyes are closed, and I shamelessly drink him in: the tightly carved body and the wide root of his cock just barely visible below the rise of my cunt. The furrowed pull of those dark eyebrows, as if his own pleasure is a problem he's trying to mentally work out, and the soft part of his lips, as if something about this has rendered him unexpectedly vulnerable. 

The nearly too-square jaw and the high cheekbones--giving his face geometric cast normally only seen in the marble busts--and the vaguely unkempt hair that waves over his neck and temples.

I'm curious about his hair, which is gorgeous but obviously neglected. I'm curious about his hands, strong but pale, as if they rarely ever seen the sunlight.

And I'm curious about his lean body and his earlier self-denial and his obvious kinky side. I'm curious about _him._ I want more of _him. Oh. Oh, no._ I've ready about this. I've researched this before. 

This is the inevitable rush of connection that comes from all the oxytocin Paul's stroked in my blood. He's flooded me with hormones, and now those hormones are insisting that I form a human bond with him, and that's why people get snuggly and all clingy after sex.

Well, that's not going to happen with me. That's not the plan. And given what I know about, Paul, I doubt it's his plan either. I'm not going to be curious. I'm not going to want him. He solved my problem, and that's that. I'm so busy reminding myself that all this affection and vulnerability is hormone-based and therefore not real that I don't notice he's opened his eyes and is staring back down at me.

"Rey," he says huskily. 

I don't know what to say back because the research didn't cover this. Do I say his name back? Do I offer him my shower? Do I tell him I don't expect him to stay? 

But before I can decide, he circles himself with a finger and thumb and makes to pull out of me, and I bite my lip at the sudden sting. He freezes, and I realize that he's looking with some worry at the pain on my face, and then with slow horror, his gaze goes to his cock.

Even from here, I can see the remnants of my innocence smeared on the condom. "Paul," I say quickly. "I can explain everything."


	4. Chapter 4

PAUL SEVIER

I have to get her blood off me, and I have to----I don't even know what I have to do. Clean her. Clean myself. Offer to lash my own back. 

Whatever it is that you do when you've accidentally fucked a virgin. Shit. _Shit!_ It makes so much sense to me now. Her little gasps of surprise let out at the smallest things. Her expression of wonder as I serviced her cunt. Her wide, vulnerable gaze as I slowly stretched her open. Stretched her open for the first time. 

And I'm going to hell because guilt is not the first thing that races through me. It's excitement. It's more lust, stiffening my spent cock. It's a dark possession, growling and flexing claws in my chest, telling me that she's mine, mine, _mine._

I ignore these though, holding up a hand to stay her words as I climb off the bed and rid myself of the condom. I've forgotten how wet sex is, how messy, although given how long it's been since I---I'm shocked I remember anything at all. I walk back to the bed, tracing the lines of her body with my eyes because I simply can't help it.

She's some kind of vision like this, her dark hair tangled everywhere in lovers' knots and her body a topography of pure adolescent fantasy---lush tits, a nipped-in waist, and hips in a decadently feminine spread.

And then there's the blood on the inside of her thighs. The questions in her deep haze eyes. The lingering redness around the sides of her hips reminding me of how she felt over my lap, squealing and writhing as she took her punishment. I spanked a _virgin._ Oh dear God.

"I'm getting a cloth for you," I say. "Stay here." 

It comes out sterner that I meant to---sterner than it should have, given what I've just robbed from her---but the immediate acquiescence in her gaze whisks the follow-up apology right off my lips.

And replaces it with a noise of approval. She is such a good student. The best one I've had, in fact. 

I quickly clean myself in the bathroom and then bring out a fresh warm cloth for her, thinking I'll just hand it to her and let her clean herself, but as I approach, she parts her legs for me, as if it's the most natural thing in the world for her to do. As if it's my due.

My cock jolts again, bobbing at visions of a future that will never happen: of this girl spreading her legs for me whenever I ask, offering up her sweet body like it's all mine to take.

Sucking my cock under my desk while I work. Writing lines t her own desk, naked and unashamed. Crawling over my lap whenever I need it, letting me pet and tease and spank that round ass until she's literally begging for release. _No, Paul._ It's a miracle she didn't run away screaming the moment I bent her over the bed. There's no way a nice girl like her---a barely non-virgin, a girl with a watch--would ever want to play my sick games.

But I let myself have this moment where I clean her myself. Where I spread her even more, carefully see to her tender skin. Roll her over and check her bottom, even though I took it fairly easy on her.

The funny thing is that after all these years, "fairly easy" was still enough to nearly make me cum in my pants. And it was her who made it that way.

Her gratifying little moans and tempting little wiggles. The way she said _I liked that_ with that pleased surprise. With such innocent abandon. Fuck. It's not a good thing the way it makes me feel. As if I'm not as lonely. As if I can have....this. 

She sighs as I clean herm and after I put the washcloth over the towel bar in the bathroom to dry, I wonder what comes next. The last time I slept with a virgin, I was a fumbling virgin myself, and whatever followed that too-short at is blurred by enough awkwardness and time that I can barely even remember it. 

I have no idea what to do as a man. As a polite and---dubiously---civilized man. And so I debate on whether I should apologize or get dressed or what, and then she holds out her arms.

"I know it's just the oxytocin," she says deeply. "But I'd like you to hold me for just a minute. You don't have to stay long, just--" She yawns, those red lips stretching hypnotically, her tongue so tempting wet and pink. "Just for a few minutes until I can metabolize these hormones." 

I should hesitate. I _would_ hesitate with any other woman. I don't do holding. I don't do postictal anything except shame and regret, and yet somehow I'm climbing into bed with her. Somehow I'm sliding under the covers and holding her into my arms, somehow I'm not balking at the familiar way she nestles into me, as if she belongs there. 

Somehow I'm relaxing around her. Somehow I'm thoroughly enjoying the way she feels like this, with her head pillowed on my chest, her curves smashed against me, and her cheek rubbing against me like a needy cat's.

I should leave. I should say that I'm sorry---for the spanking and for the barbaric way that I fucked her---and then I should just leave.

And I'm going to. In just a minute. After I've enjoyed the sated warmth of her for a little longer. After I've gotten my fill of her exquisite, sweet-smelling scent, all deep floral and spice. After I've rested my eyes and given into the strange peace that she's suddenly and deliberately infected me with. I really am going to leave after this. I really am.....

The sunshine breaks through the room with a sheepish kind of warmth, as if embarrassed to wake me up, and it's pure instinct that makes me reach for the woman in bed with me.

Well, pure instinct and a painfully erect cock, aching from a night of dreams about meeting a British girl who likes spanking and spreading her legs just for me. But my fingers encounter nothing but cool sheets, and when I open my eyes completely, I see groggily that I'm all alone.

Suddenly, I'm not so groggy anymore. The entire shameful night immediately floods back to my memories. What I did to Rey, what I took from her. Falling asleep uninvited like a fucking idiot.

You stupid, _stupid_ fucking idiot, Sevier! What the hell were you thinking?! You should have gotten up last night like you said you were going to do and left! Jesus Christ, man!

What a cretin she must think I am...what a monster. I sit up, and it should relieve any person to see what I see next, which is a hotel room bereft of the effects of it's occupant. No more suitcase on the stand. No laptop situated neatly on the desk. When I go to the bathroom, the space is as clean as it must have been when she rented it, a still-wet shower and sink the only evidence that she was here. 

That and a note propped against the mirror. I walk over and immediately pick it up. Her heavenly floral fragrance immediately fills my nostrils, overpowering my senses as a grown-ass man, as I bring it up to my face to begin reading it.

 _Paul,_ it reads in a neatly printed hand.

_I'm sorry if last night caused you any sort of worry, but I wanted you to know it was better than I ever could have dreamed of. We won't see each other again, most likely, but I'll never forget how good you made me feel. I'm so proud to have been your good and bad girl, even if it was only for one night._

_-Rey._

My chest feels heavy with something so unfamiliar, and I find myself rubbing idly at it as I set the note back down. Pick it up and read it again.

I find myself wishing that she hadn't left, that she had stayed curled up next to me in the bed, finishing what we had started last night. but more importantly, I find myself asking, _why_ did she leave?

I fold it and put it in my jacket pocket---so that the hotel cleaning staff won't find it as the make their rounds, I tell myself--but after I dress and leave the room, I find myself touching it. Re-reading it as I ride the lift down to the main lobby to head back to my own flat next door. 

Running my fingers along the edges as I walk into my complex building, taking a quick shower, dressing and then eating a swift breakfast before finally making my way to the British Museum to meet up with a friend helping me with some research at one of the libraries there.

_I'll never forget how good you made me feel. I'm so proud to have been your good and bad girl, even if it was only for one night._

This should be a good morning. I blew off some steam with a girl who let me practice all manner of depravities upon her, and when I woke up, she was gone. No dangling expectations; no awkward send-off. 

Just a sweet note that was meant to assuage me of my guilt and firmly close the door to the possibility of more in the future. Which---should be excellent, right? The last thing I need is some curvy, blunt British girl invading my thoughts while I have important work to do. Invading my space with her wanting to be spanked and her mumbling by oxytocin and her fucking stupid glinting gold _watch._

The last thing I need. It's all for the best....right?


	5. Chapter 5

REY JOHNSON

The oxytocin isn't wearing off. Or at least it's not wearing off in the way that I thought it would. I'm frowning at the glass of my train window at the countryside swishes by--flattish fields studded with animals and telephone poles, just like back in Essex---and I'm feeling an inconvenient restlessness, like I've left something important back in London. 

Something back in bed with Paul. _Stop it, Johnson._

It's not like he's a phone charger or a passport. I don't need him for anything else while I'm in town, and this....this... _.mooning_ over him is really immature. 

And if there's an advantage to losing my virginity at the ripe old age of twenty-two, it should be that I know better. But it's weird, this feeling. It's immune to logic; it defies knowing better. I find myself smiling whenever I shift in my seat and the secret aches inside me declare Paul's touch. I find myself biting my lip as I reply the fire and frenzy of his hands on my ass. 

_Good girls hold still. Good girls come on the cocks their teachers give them._ Jesus. But I do manage to stop myself from searching for Paul Sevier on social media. There's just no point.

Even with all these infatuated thoughts pinging around my brain, I know I'd never be so crazy as to track him down and reach out. My research indicated those things are unwanted. Considered too clingy. 

So I put my phone way and watch as the fields outside London slowly fold into rich, slow worlds of green trees and far-off church spires, and there's nothing Essex-like about the view anymore. And with no homework and my job for Professor Sevier not yet started--which as I think about it, doesn't strike me as they could be the same exact person----nah, there's no way--many people in the world share the same last night.

just happened to meet a guy that shares the Professor's last night and who knows they might be distantly related---wow, how odd would that be. I find myself in the luxurious position of having absolutely nothing to do.

I doze off to the gorgeous green view and the slow shake of the train. And when I do, I dream mostly of Paul.

The rain is making it harder to hear my dad's voice, I press the phone closer to my ear and squint through my clear umbrella at the house in front of me---a white, thatched affair with deep windows and riots of flowers crowding the front. 

"I said, did you make it to Sevier's house okay?" Dad repeats. "I really should've done a better job with the timing or had him pick you up while you were in London."

He sounds nervous, which is always how my father sounds. He teaches Victorian social history at the University of Cambridge, a transfer from the Americas and he's more comfortable and his cluttered office or in front of a whiteboard than he is in the real world, and these kinds of situations, even secondhand, tend to stress him out.

"This timing is fine, Dad. I wanted to have a night in London, remember?"

He makes a fretting noise. "I just wish he were there now to help you get settled in." 

Professor Sevier scheduled an impromptu research trip to London after I'd already booked my flight, and I assured Dad---and told him to tell the professor---that I honestly didn't really mind being by myself for the weekend.

I mean, a chance to rattle around an adorable old cottage and explore the gorgeous sights of the Peak District? I'd _pay_ to do that, so the opportunity to do so for free is not a hardship. 

"I'll be fine," I soothe. "I can find my way to the kitchen and the bathroom, and that's all I need."

"Well, okay," Dad says still in a worried tone. "You call me if you need anything. Sevier is a good man, but he's always been a bit reserved and not a little distracted. I can't imagine he'll be a very attentive host."

"Dad, you didn't set this whole thing up so I could sample his hospitality. You set it up so that I could have hands-on experience with a private collection before I start library school." I walk up the flagged path to the front door, looking for the bright-blue flowerpot that should be hiding the spare key. "And if I can handle you, I'm sure I can handle him."

Whether a man or woman, fussy old scholars are all the same. And I should know, because after my mom died, my father's fellow professors basically became my second family. 

I've spent my entire life around the species, and I'm incredibly grateful my dad's experience network of academic colleagues yielded the chance to spend my summer in one of the most beautiful corners of the world. However, I _have_ adjusted my expectations to include all the things that living with an old person working on a book will mean for someone like me, someone as young as me.

Terrible television shows. Stale store-bought cookies. Finicky and exacting demands on my time. _But it will be worth it in the end._

I say goodbye to Dad and let myself inside the house, parking my suitcase and wet umbrella carefully by the door so I don't drip water all over the clean flagstone floor. And then I step through the narrow hallway into the house of my dreams.

The flagged hallway is lined by bookshelf after bookshelf, each one crowded with a combination of well-worn paperbacks and sleek leather volumes and colorful hardcovers. The librarian's itch that I feel to sort through them is pure joy, pure brain-lust. I could spend hours pouring over these shelves....and I will, I decided right then and there.

I'll ask Professor Sevier if I can shelve these in my spare time, while I'm not helping him catalogue research. It would take me several delicious days to decide on a method, weighing my options between the traditional Dewey or a contemporary, more intuitive scheme....

I force myself on, past the sitting room overlooking the front garden full of flowers, past the snug with its cozy fireplace, and into the kitchen. 

It's massive and rambling and beamed and flagged and vaguely cluttered in a way that speaks to home and hearth rather than true untidiness. I follow the stairs up to find three bedrooms--two of which are clearly guest rooms, with narrow beds and nondescript furnishings, and the last is obviously Professor Sevier's. I feel a little guilty peeking inside, but I tell myself it's simply for orientations' sake as I get to know the house better. 

In any case, there's not much left to see. A large bed with an IKEA-looking duvet. An end table stacked with books. Sheepskin slippers tucked by the bed. _Slippers._

Well, if that's not a marker of advanced age, I don't know what is. It's only as I leave this room and walk back down the hall that I realize I haven't seen any pictures anywhere.

There are _paintings-_ \--small landscape-ish things that have that unmistakable "acquired by a grandmother" look--and a bust of Charles Dickens with untold years of dust caught in the bronze curls of his beard, but no pictures of Professor Sevier himself anywhere. 

No long dead wife or kids or grandkids, no obligatory picture frames with nieces and nephews. Nothing. That's a little strange, right? 

Mulling over this, I hop down from the stairs and find my way to the back of the house, which is dominated by his study. Where I imagine most of the working and cataloging will be. Like the curious cat that I am, I push the already cracked door open father and step inside. It's immediately a mistake.

The opening door sends a pile of books and pamphlets scattering across the rug--not that there's much room to scatter, given that there are piles and piles of books and papers _everywhere._ Old books. New books. Rare books. Pamphlets that should be in clear archival envelopes to at least under glass. Folders upon folders of what appeared to be photocopies. And a black cat.

Who opens her eyes at my appearance, stretches her paws out to the same point, and then rolls over so her belly's in the air. And then she goes back to sleep. 

There is a small desk off to the side--mine, I should think....or it will be mine--and a large desk that's no less cluttered than the floor but at least shows signs of rudimentary organization. And old-fashioned ink pen lies across a closed leather notebook, a blotting paper and inkwell nearby, which does nothing to revise my assessment of his age. And behind the desk, there's a wide line of windows, stretching nearly the width of the room, showing nothing but silver rain at the moment.

I sigh at the room, at the rare set of books left carelessly on the floor and the Victorian documents moldering among photocopies and a sleep cat, and I feel the librarian itch that's not so pleasant creeping up on me.

None of these things will last if they're not properly taken care of, and between organizing, cataloging, and---now, I can see---preservations efforts, I don't think I'm going to have any time at all for the books in the hallway. Or for anything else for that matter. 

I leave the books and the cat and finally walk through a glassed-in conservatory to the back of the house, where a jewel-green lawn studded with wildflowers leads down to the shallow river. Even in the rain, the colorful stones under the water seem to sparkle and flash, and I think of Paul's eyes.

Green and gold and brown. And after I remember his eyes, it's almost impossible not to remember his hand sowing fire along my backside, his lips on my mouth and my neck and my breasts.

His lips lower down. The sounds that he made as he came. With an abrupt turn, I leave the river and trudge back to the house through the rain.

Soon there will be too much work to do to even think of Paul Sevier and his every-color eyes. I spend the weekend busily, if not entirely happily. I walk the mile or so to Blakewell and enjoy my first Blakewell tart---or pudding, as I am briskly informed it's called here.

I visit Haddon Hall and enjoy the massive blooming roses with the fat bees doddering around them, and then I have tea at Chatsworth with only myself and a book, I walk the rambling paths around the vales of the Peak District, challenging in the kind of way that makes you grateful to have a drink at the end of the day but easy enough to walk in a dress like the ones I usually wear. 

***********

The cat has been left with plenty of food, but I treat her to bits and pieces of chicken from the sandwiches I get in town, and she sleeps on my lap in the evening as I read in the snug. I absolutely, positively don't think of Paul.

Not whenever I catch a glimpse of the river that reminds me of his eyes. Not when I peel off my damp clothes and remember how it felt to be undressed by him. 

Not in bed, where my curious fingers explore my secret soreness and try to mimic the feel of a haughty man's mouth. Not at all, not at all, not at all, until finally on Sunday night, I kick off my covers and climb out of bed. It's late---close to eleven o'clock---but I really just don't care. I'm so sick and tired of masturbating in the darkened silence, in an old man's guest bedroom. 

But more importantly, I'm so sick and fucking tired of remembering Paul's cool, cultivated voice that night. Sick of pretending I'm too sophisticated to care that the man I coaxed into bed is also mysterious, American, and handsome beyond relief. It's like Paul was some kind of vampire, and now I'm bitten. 

Now I'm doomed to crave his touch for all eternity. _Ugh._ And now he's turning me into the kind of girl who makes up stupid metaphors in her spare time! 

I'm stopping this right now! I'm going to put so many things inside my brain that there won't be room for Paul Sevier and his perfect body. Dad said that Professor Sevier wouldn't get in until tomorrow morning at the earliest, so I don't even bother to change out of my camisole and sleep shorts.

Instead, I walk downstairs huffing to myself, doing a little dance across the cold flagstone floors until I get to the study and it's many cozy rugs.

That cat comes with me, oblivious to the cold floors, walks up to a pile of yellowing newsprint and kneads its pointlessly for a minute, and then lies down. I walk around the room, hugging my arms around myself to ward off the clammy night chill. I poke at some of the stacks with my toes, trying to get a feel for what the professor's research seems to encompass.

I know he probably won't want me to start on anything in earnest until he arrives, but I can at least start some of it and making lists of things to do and archival materials to sort. 

But I have to be doing _something._ I have to keep my thoughts occupied. Otherwise Paul Sevier will creep into them again, and I simply just cannot have that. No, _I_ simply cannot!

The thing is that I've never had any trouble achieving something that I've set my mind to. Part of my charm, I guess. My GCSE's, and a Univeristy of my choice---everything has boiled down to research and focus and hard-core discipline. I'm really excellent at those sort of things.

I'm an excellent student or so I was told by my teachers, of course. So it was rather easy for me to promise myself that I'd be the perfect virgin. I'd be honest but not too honest, enthusiastic but not needy. I'd be able to shelve away the experience like a book and be able to revisit it with fond, wise memories. 

There was no reason to think I wouldn't be as excellent at this either. But I'm not.

The very thought makes me shuffle papers and books around a little harder than I should, sending dust clouding up into the air and stacks slumping sideways, much to the irritation of the cat, who looks at me over her shoulder and flicks her tail in a very deliberately unimpressed way. 

"Oh sure," I tell her. "It's so easy to judge a girl when all you have to do is nap and eat all bloody day long, right?"

Another tail flick. I glare at her. "You know, this wouldn't be such a mess if your owner would just learn to clean up after himself sometimes," I grumble. "I mean this is just ridiculous! No wonder my librarian senses were going completely mad the second I stepped in this house. It's an awful, _awful_ mess. Why the hell would anyone keep an office in this state is beyond me? Or their research for that matter?"

"Maybe because I like it that way," a cold voice says from behind me.

And I quickly spin around to see the furious face of Paul Sevier staring back at me, his arms folded and his face as red as a cherry. Oh.... _shit._ I'm dead. I'm a _dead_ woman for sure. Dead, dead, _dead._

"Oh, _come on,_ you have got to be _fucking_ kidding me right now, right?!" I say out loud without even consciously thinking. 

"Sadly, I don't think that's the case this time around Rey," he says, his voice deep and stern as he continues to glare at me from across the room. 


	6. Chapter 6

PAUL SEVIER

It was a long trip home. Literally. I spent my time on the train with crossed legs and gritted teeth, and then it took some artful draping of my jacket over my arm to cover my, ah, situation as I climbed onto the late bus from Matlock.

And it isn't until right now, at my front door--tired and frustrated, a heavy bag full of photographs and clothes slung over my shoulder--that I remember. That I fucking remember. 

The girl. Edward Johnson's girl. Shit. Johnson is an old acquaintance of mine. First my professor, where I spent a year studying abroad in the UK during my undergraduate degree, and then later a colleague of mine and peer as we corresponded back and forth about various topics within our closely related fields. 

I finally managed to move to the UK two years ago and secured a job at the British Museum and now we saw each other daily. 

In one exchange, I made passing mention of needing an assistant simply to wade through all the material and make some sense of it. It was a throwaway comment, bordering on a joke. That is, until Johnson wrote me back, offering up his librarian daughter for the cost of room and board. He talked about the girl quite frequently---the fond asides of a proud father but not much more.

To be honest, I completely forgot she even existed until he mentioned her. Kira.

I pictured a girl looking just like Edward---beanpole thin and bespectacled--poking around my research and asking all sorts of nosy questions about my methods, and I almost immediately said no.

I enjoyed Edward's correspondence and his company, but I took this damn sabbatical from teaching precisely so I _wouldn't_ have to talk to complete strangers. And that included any timid, mousy Johnson offspring inside my home. Inside my personal sanctuary. 

But I owe Edward. He's been a good friend to me all these years, even after Jyn happened, even after I took a break from teaching--and, well, I _really_ do need the help, if I am being honest. 

What started as a small stack of research beside my laptop has now become a behemoth of paper and ink that is happily swallowing up the rest of my study. Walking inside it is starting to put me in a bit of a bad mood---fine, a _worse_ mood--and even my cat, Silencer, seems to be losing patience with the unstable stacks of books, which have the tendency to slide and collapse under her feet when she tries to climb on them. 

Edward deserves the favor, and I deserve the help. So I said _yes_ and steeled myself to the thought of the summer with a girl bound to be as awkward and fretful as her own father. 

It's only for two months, and surely Edward would have properly prepare his daughter for what a cold, miserable bastard I am. Surely, she wouldn't take it too personally. I'd made my peace with Kira's presence before I left for London, but now....

Now there's been Rey. And there's been so peace left inside me. None at all. 

In the moonless, summer night, the lights inside the cottage, burn a merry, welcoming yellow, although I can't help but rather grimly think of what I'll find once I'm inside. I repeatedly charge myself to be _nice_ \--or, at least polite--and I remind myself that none of this is really any of her fault.

Not that I met a woman. Not that the woman let me play wicked games with her. Not that the woman let me deflower her and then somehow lulled me to sleep with soft curves and a faintly spice smell. 

It's certainly not her fault that I can't get this woman out of my head and that I'm strangely upset she left me that morning. Strangely bothered by the finality in her note. _We won't see each other again._ Fuck, why does that sting so much? At least my lingering hard-on has settled down. It's a small comfort as I unlock the front door, unshoulder my bag, and step inside. 

I expect Silencer to come whining for food as she usually does, but the front hall remains empty as I shut the door and shuck off my jacket. _She must be with the girl._

It's late, near midnight, and the girl should be in bed. Given all the lights, however, I assume she's in the snug or the kitchen, reading perhaps. Edward's always said he's a night owl himself, so perhaps it's only fair to assume that Kira is the same. 

When I get to the snug, though, she's not there. Nor is she in the kitchen. Maybe she went to bed and left the lights on for me? 

But when I see it from the back hall of the kitchen--the light coming from under the study door. Suddenly all of the dread about this arrangement comes roaring back. All of the frustration about Rey. 

And I hate that someone's in my study while I'm not in there, touching my things without my permission. I stalk to the study door, ready to kick it down and roar like a true Bluebeard, when I hear a low voice talking. A woman's alto, with a hint of a rasp around the edges. I wonder if she's talking on the phone, but then I hear her pause to wait for a response, and Silencer meows. 

Oh this _is_ great. The girl is talking to the damn cat. It shouldn't be so irritating, really, this familiarity with my cat, but it is. She's already in my study. She's already touching things that she shouldn't be. And for my only companion to be drawn into this flagrant violation of hospitality?

It's infuriating! I'm going to eviscerate her for this. I'm going to make her regret ever setting foot in my private space and making friends with my fucking cat. 

I don't even care how ridiculous that must sound. It's still fucking forbidden! I start to open the door. And then...I freeze. I'm not greeted with the sight of some scrawny, owlish bookworm.

No, I'm greeted with a heart-shaped bottom and just begs to be pulled over my lap. And a narrow waist and lust breasts and---bloody hell--no bra. She's only in a thing camisole and some very short, sleeping shorts, moving on all fours at an angle away from me, her long dark hair spilling in luscious waves and breaking over her shoulders.

No, not scrawny at all. She's a siren. She's....she's...oh, my God, you have got to be kidding me, right?

She turns as she chatters to the cat and I see her face for the first time. No lipstick, but I'd remember those plus, sinful lips anywhere. The girl inside is not Edward Johnson's daughter.

She can't be. Because she's Rey. _My_ Rey. 

"You know, this wouldn't be such a mess if your owner would just learn to clean up after himself sometimes," she grumbles, clearly frustrated with the state of _my_ mess. "I mean this is just ridiculous! No wonder my librarian senses were going completely mad the second I stepped in this house. It's an awful, _awful_ mess. Why the hell would anyone keep an office in this state is beyond me? Or their research for that matter?"

My voice is harsh. "Maybe because I like it that way,"

She spins with a gasp, dropping the book she was holding. I don't trust myself to take another step inside, not sure if I'd take her over my knee or fuck her senseless. But I do know one thing, I thought that I was furious before? It's nothing compared to now. 

"Oh, _come on,_ you have got to be _fucking_ kidding me right now, right?!" she says out loud, her hazel eyes wide and growing larger with each second that ticks by between us. She's literally just as stunned to see me as I am to see her....yeah, it's _me,_ babe. 

"Sadly, I don't think that's the case this time around Rey," I say with a low growl. "What the fuck are _you_ doing here?" I then demand. "Are you stalking me now or something?"

Her face goes from confused to stung in an instant. Then to angry. "I think the real question is what are _you_ doing here?" she asks. 

And then she reaches for one of the pokers still hanging by the discussed fireplace. She then waves it at me---as if that even looks remotely intimidating---more amusing on my part, if I'm being honest. 

"I'll--I'll call the police! And then professor---he's supposed to be back any minute now! He just went out to the....the store....and if he comes back here and finds an intruder in his house, he'll get the police for sure!"

Her voice is warbling higher in her hysteria, and I'm so bemused by the poker situation and the way she's talking about me like I'm the third person in the room and all the _lies_ she's telling and has told, that it takes me a moment to realize that she doesn't even know who I really am. I'm Professor Sevier. 

She thinks that I'm the intruder. She thinks that I might try to hurt her. Which--no. Never. I would never ever raise a hand against her. 

Except if you've got her over your knee, a silky voice reminds me. Visions of her rump under my palm fill my head and I know the right is right. 

"What are you talking about? I fucking live here," I say. "This is my fucking house!"

"B-But you live in London? You said that your flat was next to the Lancaster Hotel!"

"It's my other home," I say in a sarcastic voice. "I do have more than one house and I stay there when I'm in London. You staying in the hotel next to it was just a coincidence. Now, do you want to explain what the hell you're doing inside of my house? After that little note you left me? We'll never see each other again? Did you steal my credit card information too?"

"You do not fucking live here! Professor Sevier does, and Professor Sevier is an old man! He's friends with my father and has slippers and everything?"

Well, now I truly think that she's gone completely insane! Except...

"Friends with your father?" I repeat. I stare at her "You mean to say, your father is Edward Johnson?"

The tip of the fire poker lowers the slightest amount. "Yes, he is," she answers, her eyes narrowing. It has the unfortunate---for me---effect of making her eyelashes sweep lower, long and sooty against her cheeks. 

"Are you Kira Johnson?"

The poker lowers a bit more. "Yes," she says.

"You told me last night that your name is Rey."

She drops the poker all the way down but still holds on to it, as if she's ready to strike me down at any moment. "It is Rey. Kira's my nickname." 

"It's still a lie."

"It's not," she fires back. "And you said that your name was Paul Sevier."

I hesitate because she's got a point. It's not entirely a lie either, but it wasn't the whole truth either. "Paul Sevier is my name," I say. "Sevier _is_ my family name--I'm a tad bit surprised you didn't figure that out when---I knew...I knew it would be enough for anyone to locate me, coupled with my birthday and picture, if that alleviates my retroactive safety concerns of yours."

"Sevier," she mumbles. "So---so you're Professor Sevier?! You're him?! But....but you're not old at all!." 

Her cheeks go pink in the most tempting way, and then I notice---Oh God--her nipples have pulled tight under the criminally thin fabric of her camisole. 

Fuck. How dare she be so delicious now? When I'm so furious with her? She drops the poker, and it bounces off a pile of books.

"But you have bloody slippers and everything," she whispers.

Why the hell is she so fixated on my damn slippers? And how does she know I even have them unless she's been in my bedroom? _Oh, fuck, she's been in my bedroom._

A desperate, lust-filled rage floods me anew. "Tell me one thing," I demand. "Did you really not know? Did you really not know that it was me?"

She shakes her head vehemently. "That was the whole plan," she says, gesturing in front of her as if the plan is something she can trace the shape of. "That's why it had to be in London. It had to be a stranger. I wanted to get rid of it and then go on with my bloody life."

I study her. Years of fibbing and malingering students have given me a keen ability to detect the truth, and there's nothing but honesty glowing from her hazel eyes and flushed cheeks. She really didn't know---she had no fucking clue. 

A sudden realization comes over me, jagged with relief and something that's far too close to disappointment. "You should probably leave."

"Right," she says, smoothing down her hair. Her sits more under her camisole with mouthwatering heaviness. "I should just to back to bed, and then we'll discuss this after we've had some sleep."

"No." I interrupt. "I mean I think you should leave, _leave._ As in, go back home."

I'm not even prepared for the sudden hurt and unhappiness that floods her beautiful face. "Paul," she says.

'It's Professor Sevier to you."

"Professor," she says. "Please, don't make me leave."

The proximity of those two words together, coming out of a mouth as sweet as hers, lances heat right down to my groin. _Professor, please. Oh....fuck._

"I really, _really_ do want this," she continues. "Not just for the work, although it will be invaluable to have on my resume, but to have a summer that's somewhere new and different. If you send me home now, I'll just be bored and alone with nothing to do, and I promise to be good if you just let me stay. I'll be so, so good, Professor. Please!"

I have to swallow. Remember again that I'm a grown-ass man with a job to do and not a fucking monster. "It's impossible, Rey. Surely even you can see that. It's wildly inappropriate for us to even work together now."

Her tongue peeps out to wet her lower lip. "I won't be inappropriate towards you," she whispers. "I promise."

Does she not understand? She is inappropriate without even trying. Her earnestness. Her extravagant body. Everything about Rey Johnson is fiercely unseemly, and it makes me crave very unseemly things. 

I can't have her in this house---her spiced and flowery scent in my nose, her dark hair catching the sunlight in my study---and not want to bend her over a desk. 

Not want her down on her knees with her mouth open and those hazel eyes trained up at me as she waits for the crumbs of my approval. And I've vowed not to be that man anymore. Whatever happened in London be damned, I'll control myself starting...right now. 

I completely ignore the tear-shine in her eyes when I say, "No. You'll leave tomorrow. We'll make the final arrangements in the morning."

I mean to leave her there, with the finality of my decision hanging around her, but I have to stop. I don't turn to look at her. I simple makes absolutely sure that she hears me. I _need_ her to hear me.

"And no offense, Rey, I don't really like how you talk about your virginity like it's a burden....or at least was in the past sense. Like it was something you had to coax a complete and total stranger into doing away with. It was gift to me." 

Then I leave her among the books and the papers, and when I reach my bedroom, I pull out my cock with embarrassingly frantic hands and stroke myself, thinking of those tits under her camisole. 

And after I cum all over my fist and clean up, I kick my slippers underneath my bed with a low growl, crawl into bed, and lie awake for what seems like an untold amount of hours with Rey Johnson haunting my thoughts like a spirit haunts a fucking house.

Dear God, this is really going to be long fucking night.......

*********

I barely sleep. And around five o'clock, when the sun is beginning to pain the sky on the other side on the other side of my little valley, I climb out of bed. Frustrated and hard as a rock, even after two more rounds with my fist.

Quiet rounds, so that she wouldn't hear, although I almost wanted her to. I wanted her to creep by the door and listen to what she did to me.

I wanted her to push her way in as boldly as she pushed her way into my night three days ago and demanded to be fucked. Beg to be fucked. Promised to be her professor's good little girl. Of course, it didn't happen, and I came into a T-shirt like a fucking adolescent, furious all the while. 

I'd done so well after Jyn---so well for _years_ \---and now here's Rey Johnson with her mouth just made for my cock, with her backside just begging to be spanked. Grumbling, I fish out my slippers from under the bed, yank some drawstring pants up over my hips, and pull on a clean T-shirt. If I can't fucking sleep, I may as well get to work. Silencer joins me as I make a cup of tea and set out some of the latest texts I've been reading, along with my notebook, and pen,

She curls up on the table next to my notebook, oblivious to how many times I nudge at her to make writing room for her hand, and together we work until the kitchen slowly fills with light and the sun decided to peer directly into my house.

I flip over the latest sheet of what I've been reading---a selection from a Victorian ladies' magazine---and move it to the edge of my workspace, which happens to be a nearly perfect square of sunlight coming in through the window. 

"You really shouldn't expose it to the light like that," comes a soft voice from behind me, and it takes everything that I have not to flinch at the sudden intrusion.

Rey appears at the edge of my vision, her body in some kind of knit dress that looks nearby pornographic on her curves, her hair woven into a long, messy braid---the kind of braid that makes a man think of pulling on it.

Her mouth is curved into a small smile as she sits down at the kitchen table, but there's a flat sheen of defeat in her eyes.

I look away from her and rub at my chest again. "I suppose next you'll chide me for not even using protective gloves, am I right?"

"Actually, if you want to get all technical about it, you shouldn't even use gloves with that sort of paper," she says. "The fibers in the gloves might catch on the document itself, and it's almost very important to have a feel for the page itself as you handle it. It's quite a delicate thing, handling something that rare, and you need every tiny, minute sensation to help you feel for whether it's brittle or supple. On whether it might break or not."

I'm instantly hard again. From her talking about the paper, I mean.

"Duly noted," I say shortly, hoping that she doesn't see how she's clearly affected me. 

I tug at the page out of the sunlight. A moment passes, when I pretend to go back tp my reading and ignore her---as if I could attempt to ignore her. My body definitely can't.

She endures the silence for an admirably long time. And then, "Are you really going to send me home?"

She asks it in a soft voice, and when I look up to meet her gaze, I see that defeat in her gaze again. I can't really say why it bothers me, only that it does. Only that in the bizarre and short circumstances of our acquaintance, I've come to expect that hazel gaze to bubble over with confidence and eager energy. 

I set my pen down and run a hand over my face. "You have to see why it's impossible." 

"But I don't, that's just it. I already told you I'd be good. I'd be better---"

"Your father sent you to me with the tacit implication that I'd keep you reasonably safe during your stay. Do you honestly think that he'd one-hundred and ten-percent comfortable with you staying in my house if he knew what happened between us in London? He'd fucking kill me."

"I'm twenty-two years old, Paul, not five," Rey insists, leaning forward. "He knows perfectly well that I'm an adult. And besides, it was just the one time. _One time,_ Paul. And we didn't even know who the other really was. It's an outlier, not even a real data point, and it should be thrown out the window." 

I scowl at her. I scowl because there's a part of her argument that's logical and because I don't even care about the parts that aren't. As much as I know she needs to go, as much as I want her to go---dammit, _I do,_ \---my thoughts keep crowding with plans and ideas and all the moments we'd have together if she stayed here....with me. 

"And," she says, sensing my weakness and gaining momentum now. "you really do need someone to fix this mess of yours, no offense."

"It's not a mess," I say coldly, but we both know I'm lying through my teeth. Mess is possibly the kindest word for it.

"I can organize it for you, index it all, and store it away safely and properly. And you won't even know that I'm in the room."

I have the vision of Rey brushing sweaty tendrils of hair of her forehead as she carries books around, bending over often. Scratching away at her desk like a good little girl. I have to swallow hard again.

"Please, Professor?" she asks, leaning forward so much now that her breasts press against the table. 

But that's not what I chiefly notice this time. No, it's her eyes, sparkling like sunlight dancing off ocean waves, even as she braces herself for my second rejection. 

I abruptly want that look out of her eyes. I want to see her eyes as they were that night we spent together, awed and worshipful and happy. That's the only reason I can think of for why I say it.

"Fine."

"Fine?" Her entire face lights up, a happy flush high on her cheeks and her eyes like golden flames. She looks like she wants to kiss me right now and something inside me wishes that she would. Jeez, I wonder how I must look on her side of things.

"Yes, fine. You can stay." 


	7. Chapter 7

REY JOHNSON

Paul stands up, the sunlight catching on the waves of his sleek, black hair. He impatiently shakes it out his eyes, just as he did earlier when I stood behind him and watched him work.

He'd been too absorbed to hear me as I walked in, too absorbed to noticed me staring at his long fingers as they gripped his pen and made notes in an endearingly untidy scrawl. His too-pale skin and disheveled hair makes sense to me now, fitted into the context of his work.

He's an obsessed scholar, subsumed by his projects, and it's easy to see how the everyday details of life have become unimportant. 

My own father is the same way, and so are most of his friends. They'd forget to eat if someone didn't remind them. "I'm going to change," Paul says in that short, clipped way of his. "and then I'll be back downstairs and we can begin."

He still doesn't sound pleased, but I'm so relieved I get to stay with him here that I ignore his grouchiness. 

"Is there anything that I can do while you go and get ready? Make you some coffee?" I think for a long minute, remembering where he's at. "I meant, tea?"

He narrows his eyes. "Just don't go around touching anything while I'm not around."

"Whatever you say," I reply, fast enough that it nearly sounds sarcastic. "Professor," I add, hoping that will ameliorate any unintentional offense. 

His brown eyes darken at my last word and he stalks from the room as if I've enraged him. I sigh the moment I think it's finally safe. While I'm used to grumpy scholars. Paul has got to be one of the grumpiest that I've ever encountered. 

Well, not grumpy exactly. _Cold_ is a much better word. Glacial, even. Unfeeling. Stony. I stand up and stretch, deciding don't touch anything surely doesn't extend to coffee or tea and needing the familiar act to steady myself, because holy fuck, Paul Sevier is Professor Sevier. The man I'm spending the entire summer with is the man who ended my virginity, and if I was worried about my ability to be wise and and sophisticated about this before, it's nothing compared to now. 

Because even with as cool and distant as he is, I still yearn for his touch. Even with his gaze flashing displeasure, I crave the trace of it over my body.

Even in its cruelty, his perfect mouth begs for my own mouth, my fingertips. And even covered with a T-shirt and loose pants, his leanly muscled body calls to mine, bringing me memories of how he looked moving between my legs, memories of how taut and rigid he went as he filled my pussy with his own ecstasy. 

I take a deep, steadying breath, trying to stop my body's response to the visions of that night, to the presence of him the house. I can't work next to him like this, all wet and nipples hard, not when I need to prove to him how professional that I can be.

I'll save it for bedtime, when I'm all alone in the dark, one hand clapped over my own mouth so that he can't hear me cum. Just like I did late last night. 

Paul doesn't have any coffee, so I decide to make a cup of tea for him. I find a mug, fill it with water, and pop it into the microwave for a couple of minutes. When it's done, I carefully take it out, and I'm about to drop in the bag when Paul says in a horrified voice, "What on earth do your think you are doing?"

I whirl around to see him looking unfairly sexy in a thin sweater and belted jeans that hang low on his narrow hips. He's leaning against the kitchen doorway, his arms crossed and a frown on that sharp-edged mouth of his.

"Um, I'm making tea?" I say, the last part filling up like a question because I'm feeling suddenly unsure. 

Maybe I grabbed his favorite mug, or maybe I'm using some precious store bought of teabags that visitors aren't allowed to touch---or maybe visitors aren't allowed to touch anything at all, and he's provoked that I didn't listen to his edict about touching things. 

"That's not how you make tea," he says. "You use the kettle for tea, not the microwave as barbarians do. You're British sweetheart, you _should_ know this."

The disgust in his voice is so pronounced that I can't help but giggle slightly. This only deepens his growl. "We have work to do," he bites out. "Follow me. Bring that cup of atrocity with you if you must."

I do bring my cup of atrocity, following him down the hall and trying very hard not to notice how his ass and hips look in his pants---tight and trim. Powerful in a subtle, spare way. 

Powerful in the kind of way that makes a girl think of how they'd feel under her hands. How they'd look bunching and flexing between her thighs. I give off a little shiver. _Down, girl._ I've got to be extra good today. I've got to prove that he doesn't need to send me back home. 

The cat winds between our feet as we walk into the study, plopping down on the first pile of papers she sees, and I set my mug down on my desk and wait for Paul to give me further instructions. 

He stands behind his own desk now, gazing at me with a haughty expression. "You'll do as I say in here," he says flatly. "That's without question. Understood?" 

"Completely understood."

His hands are flexing down by his sides as he looks down at me, and for a moment, all I can remember is the way they felt as he spanked me. One palm setting fire to my skin as the other hand held me steady over his lap. 

I have to press my legs together at the sudden throb my clit gives at the memory. Who would have thought I'd like to be spanked so much? So much that not only had I become a wet, squirming mess at the time, but that I secretly longed for it again? He swallows, and I realize that his beautiful eyes are no longer on my face but on my body. On the very place that I'm pressing my thighs together.

"Sit," he commands hoarsely. "Get something to take notes with."

I sit, finding a notepad and a pen that have been shoved into one of the nearby drawers. "Ready whenever you are, Professor," I say, and he makes a noise, tearing his eyes away from where I sit with my legs crossed and pen poised in the air. 

He sits down at well, keeping his gaze away from me. "I'm currently writing a book about Victorian courtship narratives," he says to the William Holman Hunt painting on his wall. "Not necessarily the every day rituals themselves but the morality tales given to young people in order to illustrate ow they _should_ behave. As well as the satirical tales that illustrate how they _did_ behave."

"And how did they behave?" I ask as I write.

"As youth everywhere in every time behaves," he says grimly. "Improperly." 

I look up at him with a smile. He doesn't smile back, glancing away from me as our eyes met. "Surely that's kind of heartwarming," I say. "Kind of fun? To think even Victorian's couldn't help but feel naughty every now and again?"

Paul presses his eyes closed. "I think," he says slowly, "it proves that we never learn from the mistakes of the past. We only _deepen_ them."

There's a deep bitterness in his words that takes me by surprise; whatever he's thinking of at the moment, it's obviously unhappy. It was razor sharp teeth, and it's chewing away in his mind---I can see it playing out across his beautiful face.

And then he opens his eyes with a long inhale, speaking to the painting once more. "I've only been through a third of the things that I've collected, perhaps less, and so as part of organization scheme, we need to index if I've seen if before."

"Of course," I say, jotting that down. "What else do you need? Digitization?"

He makes a face---it's very similar to the face he made at my cup of tea. "I would prefer paper, if you don't mind."

"Victorian paper is very cheap and very acidic," I inform him. "Even in the very best of conditions, which..." I trail off meaningfully, tilting my head at the room decaying paper sitting in the sunlight.

"And?" Paul prompts testily. "Your point is?"

"And my point is, some of these paper works are not going to be around much longer. By the time you get to then, they may just crumble in your hands. Digitizing what you can't just helpful for you research, it's the responsible thing to do as potentially the sole owner of some of these so called texts."

He gives a put-upon sigh. "Well, if you really think it necessary...then I suppose." 

"I'll only mark the most at-risk items for photographing or scanning," I promise. I make a few more notes and give the room an assessing look. "We'll need to order some archival supplies---is there room in the budget for that?"

"I'm sorry, the budget?" he echoes, sounding quite puzzled.

"My Dad said that you were working with grant money."

"Oh, yes, of course, the grant." He gives a shrug that conveys something close to discomfort, and I watch curiously, as I've never see him truly uncomfortable before---only annoyed. "Money is not a concern," he says, and he actually looks embarrassed by this.

Maybe it was an exceptionally large grant and he feels strange about accepting it? Who the bloody hell knows. 

"Okay, then." I say, standing up. "Shall we get started then?"

An imperious look. "You shall get started. _I_ shall work." 

"Yes, Professor," I say it perhaps too mockingly, earning myself another glare, and I scuttle over to the far corner of the room and get to work before he scolds me again. 

It becomes clear that Paul's system, if that word can even be used, has been to stack the most promising texts closest to his desk and the least promising in the corners and along far wall. I work steadily through the morning, building up a light sweat as I shift through stacks of material, trying to get a handle on what I'll need to know to build a comprehensive database for Paul.

Several times I peek up over my work to watch him at his des, unable to stop myself from staring at the chiseled jaw flexing in concentration and the long eyelashes sweeping against his cheeks as he studies his papers and types away on his laptop, pushing up his black-rimmed glasses every so often. 

It should be illegal for a man to be that handsome _and_ American. It just isn't fair.

I suspect he doesn't want to be bothered, so around lunchtime I wander into his kitchen and make us simple sandwiches, bringing his plate back and wordlessly setting it at the edge of his desk.

He reaches for the foot automatically, eyes pinned to his laptop screen, and it isn't until he's finished his sandwich that he seems to realize he's even eaten it at all. 

"Thank you, Rey," he says after a minute, and I notice that his voice has thawed the tiniest bit. "For the sandwich, I mean." Not much. But a bit. 

I'm already back to work, and I look up to see him staring at me with an expression that I can't really decipher. "You're welcome, Professor," I say, and he grunts in response.

I take it as progress and fight back a smile as I lean back down to my large stack of books. 

***********

The day passes much the same as this. I finally get my laptop from my room and start on the database. Paul sighs a lot at the frequent tapping of my keyboard, but when I offer to go work in the kitchen, he merely just scowls at me and mutters, "No, stay."

So I stay. Around six o'clock, I bring up the subject of dinner and ask if he'd like me to make it. He seems to fight some inner war with himself.

"I'll order us takeout," he says, which s how we end up eating delicious Indian food at the kitchen table with his cat complaining loudly at our feet.

"So did the writing go today?" I ask him innocently enough, and he stabs at his butter chicken with a fierce frown.

"You should know better than to ask any writer that sort of question."

"So it went well then?"

He directs the frown at me. "You're teasing me." He says it, incredulously, as if no one has ever dared to do it before.

In fact, I'm suddenly quite certain that no one has ever dared to tease him before this. He's very un-teasable, with that haughty face and icy gaze of his. But I'm feeling energetic and playful from my own productive day, and it's so very hard not to provoke him when he makes such handsome provoked faces.

"I won't tease you any more if it hurts you feelings," I poke. It's like poking a sleeping polar bear with him.

He glares over at me. "It doesn't hurt my feelings."

"You do seem a little hurt by it."

"I'm not hurt."

"In fact, I think I need to make it up to you," I banter back. "Maybe you can make me write an twelve page essay on my bad behavior today."

His pupils dilate at the same instant that my own words filter back through my mind, along with their subtext. Which is only one word: punishment. Which of course makes me think back on the night we were together, which of course makes me want to be bent over that strong knee of his again. 

And with the way Paul's fingers are clenched around his fork, I wonder if he's wanting the same thing.

"Excuse me," he says abruptly, standing up and setting his dishes by the sink.

He leaves to go into his study, and I hear the door close firmly behind him. The message is evidently clear. _Do not follow him._

Feeling a little flushed from my body's immediate response to the idea of punishment from Paul, I clean up after dinner and go upstairs. I mean to read for a while or maybe watch a movie on my tablet, but by the time I shower and get into bed, I'm more worked up than ever. 

I make sure that my door is locked, and then I quietly climb into bed. I then reach into my panties and let my mind fill with everything Paul--his ferocious hands and his wicked mouth and his cock so heavy and so thick with wanting me. It doesn't take me very long, the climax, I mean, because it's been building all day long.

All day like a slow fire burning inside of me, and at the first touch of my hand, my body is already quivering and tense, ready to snap like a rubber band.

The orgasm is fast and furious and ultimately unsatisfying, and when I come down from it, I come down with an itchy feeling of sheer utter disappointment. Of unabated longing. And then as I sigh and pull my hand away from myself, I hear it---the creak of a floorboard just outside of my bedroom.

I go completely still underneath my covers, my face flooded with embarrassment and something else that's even harder for me to name. Anticipation? Hope? Wishful-thinking, even, maybe?

Do I really want Paul to kick down the bedroom door, pin me down to the bed, and finally go all Professor Sevier on me? _Yes! Yes, bloody fucking-hell, I do!_ God, I want it more than anything. The floorboard outside my bedroom creaks again, and I find that I can't breathe. I can't move.

I'm so ready for him to force his way in here and relieve the still-aching need deep in my core. But he doesn't. 

Hushed silence fills the corners and crevices of the room, and I'm left alone once more. Empty. Unfulfilled. Unsatisfied. Sleep after that takes a very long time to find me after that. 

A week goes by like this. During the day, Paul is uncommunicative and distant towards me. I work and he works, and I have to steal glimpses of him working, his black hair hair burnished in a hear-gold by the June sunlight and his jaw ticking in that particular way as he thinks, pushing up his black-rimmed glasses every so often on the bridge of hi nose.

I feed him lunch, which he barely even notices, and then at some point I tentatively bring up dinner, which is almost always some kind of carryout and also an excuse for him to jab angrily at his food until he finds a reason to leave the table altogether. And then I go up to my room and read or work until I can't stand it anymore, and I rub myself to climax. I never do hear that floorboard creak again, buy every single time I hope that I do.

I hope that Paul comes in to my room and claims me. I want it more than I want anything, even more than I wanted to stay.

Or maybe I wanted to stay because I wanted him to claim me more than anything---I'm not even sure at this point, but I suspect now that it's both. So much for being sophisticated, Rey.

By my seventh day, the air in the study is so thick with tension that you could basically taste it. Then sun is hot through the window, and I'm a very dismayed British girl when I realize that a box fan is the closest thing Paul has to air conditioning around this bloody place. 

We crack open a window and angle the fan so that it doesn't blow century-old paper everywhere, but it barely helps. Even that cat of his escapes the house with a cantankerous meow, jumping out of the open window and loping into the back garden to search of some cool shade. My sleeveless dress is way too hot, and I'm tugging constantly at the neckline, feeling warm and flushed even with my long hair fastened up on the top of my head.

I'm completely jealous of the cat, jealous of her comfortable shady spot under the tiny orchard tree, but all of my work is here in the study, and I can't just up and leave either my work or Professor Grouchy-Pants, who is even grouchier than usual today.

The second time I trip over a stack of books, making a ton of mess and noise, Paul slams the lid of his laptop shut. "You," he says darkly.

Just that. Just _you._ And then he glares at me with those lust-filled dark eyes of his. 

"I-I'm sorry," I say. "It's just so messy in here and hot and....what is it?"

"Let me ask you something, if I may? Do you even care that you're making it nearly impossible for me to even fucking work under these conditions?"

normally, I find his arrogant coolness sexy or rather amusing for my liking, but not today. It's too hot for one thing, and I'm eyeballs deep in fixing up _his_ mess, and so I snap back at him. "Not in the bloody slightest." 

I know instantly that I've fucked up. Paul is a man of very little patience, and the kind of lippy insolence that I've just displayed is absolutely one of his biggest pet peeves.

I feel a quick dart of fear that I've only just managed to get myself fired. Get myself sent back home. Oh shit. Paul's face could be cut from stone right now, and his words are made of pure ice when he finally speaks.

"Come here." 

"Paul--"

"You either call me professor in here or nothing at all," he interrupts coolly.

"Professor---"

"I _said_ come....here." 

With some trepidation, I straighten my dress and walk toward him, bracing myself for the inevitable words. _You're fired. Now get the fuck out of my sight._ And I hate the way tears burn at the back of my eyes, the way my throat balls up, because it's so stupid that I have grown so attached in such a short amount of time. 

Not just to this beautiful cottage in this beautiful place but to _him_ , the most beautiful thing of it all. If I had to leave him now, I wouldn't be able to hear the disappointment. 

_Disappointment._ What a stupid word for what I really am feeling. I'd be utterly heartbroken. I can feel it breaking even now with the anticipation that those exact words must might escape from his lips---I've lost any chance of---having him---again.

*********

Paul regards me from across his desk, his arms folded over his chest, his mouth pressed into a flat line. "Don't make me tell you again, Rey. You're pushing my buttons as it is. Now, come _here_ ," he repeats, and I realize what is is that he wants. 

He wants me close to him, on the other side of his desk. My heartbeat kicks up a thousand paces. My mouth goes dry. He wants me close so that there's no mistaking his angry dismissal. He wants me close so that he can make it very, very clear that I have to leave. And maybe I deserve it.

Not for knocking over the books but because I haven't been a very good girl at all this week, what with all the silent, pining looks that I've been throwing his way and the equally silent masturbating in his guest bedroom. 

Tears threaten to spill out of my eyes, and crazy promises threaten to spill out of my mouth: that I really will be good for him this time, that I'll be the best assistant a professor could ever have, that I'll happily endure all of his moods and cutting remarks if only he'd let ne stay close to him. But I swallow both the tears and the words. I need to keep my dignity, or what's left of it, that is. I know at least that much about myself.

That when I'm back home in my tiny apartment, curled around an empty bottle wine, I'll be able to hold on to the memory of me being composed and resilient, to the knowledge that I didn't humiliate myself.

As I walk around the desk, Paul pushes his chair back as if he'll stand, but he stays seated, he keeps his body angled to the front. 

I take a deep breath, willing myself to be as cool as untouchable as he is, waiting for him to stay the words that will only send me home. But those aren't the words he says.

"Red means stop," he tells me, and then I'm seized by the waist, and thrown over his lap.

Blood rushes to my head as my hands find the floor to pure instinct, and his hands easily catch and arrange me, one of his long legs hooking over mine when they kick up in the air. And I'm wet. Instantly, shamefully and embarrassingly wet. 

It's like all the silent orgasms and all the daylight fantasies and muffled desires, they are all concentrated into longing for this one thing, this one act of debauchery. I don't need a kiss or a murmured compliment--I just need _this._ To be bent over Paul's knee like a disobedient schoolgirl. 

And clearly, he needs it too. That much is clear from the way his hands tremble as they shape over my backside, smoothing over the fabric of my dress with a slowness that feels very much like desperation in disguise. A thick shape nudges into my hip, solid and blunt, and the sunlight proof that he wants me back is enough to make me almost whimper right then and there. 

The whole thing is just about enough to make me whimper. He's not going to be hearing any safe words out of my mouth. Not today. 

"You make it impossible for me to work," he breathes. "You make it impossible for me to concentrate. To sleep. To eat."

"Why? Because I made a mess?" I ask tremulously. 

His hand then slips under the hem of my dress and palms at my backside. "Because you made a mess," he says in a low growl, squeezing my ass hard enough for me to yelp. "And because you distract me with your fucking dresses and your fucking hair and your fucking watch."

He flips the skirt of the dress up over my waist, baring my ass and thighs to the warm air of the room. 

"Excuse me, but what the _fuck_ are these?" he asks dangerously, a finger tracing along the lacy edge of my black panties. 

"Um, knickers the last I checked," I answer him, my face burning and my core clenching. I want so very badly for him to stroke along my center, to slip a finger inside of the lace and rub me where I'm swollen and wet, but he doesn't.

He just continues with that maddening tease of his. "These are the kind of things bad girls wear," he says sternly. "Are you being a bad girl today, Rey?"

"Yes," I exhale. "Yes, I am."

The first spank. I squeal, my body arching away from the force, but there's nowhere for me to go, nowhere to be except against his hot, firm body. 

"You know what else makes it impossible?" he asks.

"What?" I manage.

"Listening to you cum on your own hand, night after night."

I suck in a guilty breath, grateful for once that he can't see my face and the redness appear in my cheeks. "I--that's not--I mean--"

"Don't fucking lie to me, Miss Johnson."

Not Kira. Not even Rey. Miss Johnson, like I'm misbehaving student of his. The thought turns me on beyond all belief, and I squirm in his lap. "I-I didn't mean to---"

"Didn't mean to? You're lying," he accuses. "You think that I don't know what you do at night, you dirty girl? You think that I don't know how you slip your fingers between your legs and wish that it were my fingers in it's place? My mouth? My cock?"

And I'm so far gone with lust at this point and all I can do now is moan---and that's the wrong thing to do apparently---egging him on. 

"Tell me, did you do it to drive me out of my goddamn mind? Hmm?" Another loud spank. "Did you do it hoping that I would break down the fucking door and fuck you like your fingers just couldn't Stretch you and fill you until you are left feeling like your mind is spinning out of control?"

"Yes," I whisper as another spank lands hard on my cheeks. "Yes, I wanted that."

"You naughty little girl," he admonishes. " _Very_ naughty girl." 

Several more rain down on my backside, and I am past struggling now, past anything but the need for friction against my clit, the need to be filled deep inside.

"Please," I beg wildly. My hair is tumbling down around my face, and my nose is starting run, and it feels like I've been spanked within an inch of my life, and I need _something_ , something only he can give me. "Please, Paul."

He gives me an almighty spank. "Try that again."

"Please, Professor."

"That's much better," he rumbles, and then his fingers are right where I need hun, pressing against the fabric covering my pussy. 

He tugs the lace panties aside, studying his prize for a long moment before fingering me in rough exploration. He makes a noise of approval at what he finds in it's place.

"So fucking wet," he says with a crude pleasure. "So fucking wet and drenched just for me."

His hand grips my hair and turns my head so that I can look at him--his other hand keeps working at my sopping-wet pussy, teasing my entrance and working inside my tight channel so slowly that I can feel my toes curl.

"Tell me what do you want, Miss Johnson?" he asks, and he's as scornfully proud as ever, but there's something in the way he asks it and in the way his hand pauses inside me--

Then I realize, he's waiting for me to carry this kinky game of his even further. He's waiting for me to choose. And it's not even a choice at this point. It hasn't been a choice since I clung to him in the London rain. I will never ever choose red as long as I live, as long as I am around him.

"I want to be your good girl, Professor Sevier. Please, oh _please,_ let me be your good girl again, _please_!"

"Babe, I'd thought you'd never ask."


	8. Chapter 8

PAUL SEVIER

I knew this morning that I was near my breaking point. 

All week it's been building, stoked by every fire imaginable. Her adorable and distracting habit of running the top of her pen over her bottom lip as she worked. The thoughtful feeding and bringing me fresh mugs of tea, once she figured out the kettle. The unknowing way she flashed me her panties as she crawled in all fours around my office, shifting through stacks of research.

At at night....fuck. It was purely an accident the first time. I was just passing down the hallway to get a glass of water when I heard her moaning. 

It was only the quiet _mmm_ of feminine relief, but it went straight through me like a electric shock. I froze on the spot, instantly picking up on the rustle of sheets and the quickening of breath and---God have mercy on my soul---a sound that could be nothing other than a slender finger moving through a wet pussy. 

I listened, hard and throbbing, until the very end of her sweet gasp of pleasure, and then I stole back to my room to toss off fast and vicious, cumming so quickly that I could barely catch my next breath. 

And I've repeated the voyeurisms every night since. How could I not? I burned so fiercely with wanting her, I ached with being so near and yet holding myself back, and by today, I was near mad with it.

Her lewd curves and even lewder mouth, both combined with those still-innocent eyes. And then she had to go and put her hair up, with only a few damp tendrils escaping, as if to taunt me by caressing all the places along her neck and shoulders that I could not. I didn't care that she knocked over a stack of books in front of me.

I cared that she made me a total, fucking madman. A wild thing, a beast, a hunter. A monster. I _cared_ that I wanted her beyond all sense and propriety, and I cared that she was too fucking smart and helpful for me to find any fault with. 

I cared, in other words, that she was beyond perfect, and that by being perfect, she made the most imperfect version of myself. 

So as I hold her over my lap, one hand twisted in that luscious hair and the other still wet from her cunt, I ask her one last time. "Are you sure that you want to be my good girl? It will take an awful lot of work."

She pulls her plump lower lip between her teeth. "You said that red means stop, right? So I say _red_ when I need a time-out?"

"That's correct, Miss Johnson."

She blinks up at me. "Then that's all I need to know. Do what you like with me, Professor." 

Christ, but she's dangerous. Some kind of siren sent to lure me off my path. I push her to her knees in front of me, spreading my legs on either side of her, enjoying the view of her big hazel eyes all sultry as she looks at up at me.

I enjoy it almost as much as I enjoyed the glowing skin of her ass. Almost as much as examining the tight entrance to her body, all pink and glistening wet, and remembering how unthinkably tight she'd been around my cock that fateful night. How I had to literally wedge my way in. 

Hell, I enjoy it all. I drink it all in like a man who hasn't tasted a drop of water in several years. 

"You've made me so _fucking_ hard, like a bad girl," I drawl, loving how her eyes widen at the word _hard._ "And a good girl would attempt to fix it."

"Fix...." she asks, and then her cheeks go very pink. "Oh.... _oh!_ "

"Yes. I want you to take it out, Miss Johnson. I'm getting _very_ impatient." 

Her hands are nervous and unpracticed as she works my belt open. "I've never..." Her voice comes out in a faltering murmur that's so unlike her usual confident alto. She clears her throat. "I've never done this before."

"Then just do as I say," I inform her. "And I'll teach you everything you need to know. Funny, isn't it?"

"Wh-What is?" she asks.

I smirk darkly down at her. "You _needed_ a teacher after all. I can show you the ways of good enjoyable sex, the way it should be, if you let me."

She nods, squaring up her shoulders a bit, and sets her attention to the task, like any good student would. There's something deeply erotic about her inexperience, something that makes it more than the playacting this kind of roleplay usually is. 

A part of this is real---so real that it might be wrong---and I can't bring myself to stop it. I let the wrongness of it wash over me, opening myself to it, letting it inside a cold, sleeping heart that's been dead to real pleasure for far too long. I hiss as her hands seek me out, drawing my naked and ruddy flesh into the air. 

She stares at it with as just much awe and panic and excitement as she did that night in London---as if she can't wait to have me inside even as she knows I'll be too big---and that makes me want to pound my chest like a caveman.

Makes me want to pull her up onto the chair and thrust into her wet opening. I want her impaled on me. I want her withering from the stretch of me.

I want her coming so hard that her body tries to curl into a ball because she can't stand it, she just can't stand it. But for now, I settle for this. "Put your mouth there, Miss Johnson."

Her eyelashes flutter as she looks up at me questionably. "But what if I'm not any good at it?"

Quite frankly, it's a miracle that I haven't erupted all over her already, but I don't break character to tell her that. "Then you'll just have to practice, won't you? Best to way to learn is to start now."

The lower lip gets bitten, and one eyebrow arches slightly in a swift movement that I know means she's in deep thought. And then she leans forward and presses a chaste kiss to the underside of my cock. 

"L-Like that?" she asks, peering up at me. 

Her mouth is still close enough to my flesh and I feel the sweet puffs of her breath. My belly clenches. "Almost, Miss Johnson. Use your tongue. Lick me."

"Lick," she murmurs to herself. "I-I can do that."

And she does, setting that plush mouth to me once again, this time parting her lips, allowing her tongue to slip out. The second that it touches me, I let out a ragged breath; it's heaven, pure heaven, and the look she gives me is nothing short of vixenish---which, despite everything, despite how lurid and depraved this moment is, almost makes me me smile with a grudging kind of respect.

I can say many things about Rey Johnson, and most of them are grievances---that she's too bold, too eager, too happy---but those are also the same things I can't ever imagine changing about her. 

They are the same things that reassure me that, while I might be a monster, I'm still a monster with a conscience, because the girl between my legs knows exactly what she's doing. She'll survive this. Even if I don't. She licks me again, less tentative this time and more certain, a long steady motion that has my bloody heating and freezing in fitful starts.

And then her natural eagerness spills over and she starts licking at my crown as if it's the worlds greatest cherry-flavored lollipop, like she can't get enough of it.

I thread my hands through her hair, but I don't push her down. Not yet, anyways. I simply flex and twist my fingers in the silky strands and guide her mouth to where I need it most. From my taut, swollen tip to the turgid bas, from the root to the velvety underside, rewarding her with my groans whenever she does oh, so well. 

"Now, suck it," I say hoarsely. "Put it in your mouth and suck---the whole _fucking_ thing." And she does. The flood of heat and soft wet is almost too much, and I'm gritting my teeth against the urge to cum. "God, you suck me so good, Rey,"

I groan, my head falling back against my chair. I keep my hands in her hair, pushing her down just far enough to get that squeeze at the heat of my prick.

"Fuck....FUCK!"

I look down at her, and she's a vision like this, her beautiful dark hair tumbling everywhere around my hands and her perfect mouth wrapped around my cock. Her cheeks are hollowed and her eyes are wet and emerald and gold, and I think I could look at this for the rest of my life.

Except there's something I want to see even more. "On your feet," I tell her, wincing as her hot mouth leaves my cock to throb wet and alone in the air of the room. 

I stand as she stands, and then I bend her over the desk, ignoring the papers and notes that go flying as I do. 

"You stay here," I command, and I go upstairs to my bedroom to find a condom. The tiny box in my end table is depressingly old, and it would be funny to think that I've seen more sex in the past week and than I have in the past three years if it weren't so painfully true.

I find myself taking the steps back downstairs faster than I should, not only excited to get back down to Rey and her willing body, but also crawling with this odd fear that I'd return to the study and find her gone. That she'd finally come to her senses and leave and take her forthright sweetness elsewhere. 

The fear is astonishingly pervasive, and I find myself rubbing at the tight spot in my chest as I push open the study door. And find her still stretched over my desk, like the exceptionally good listener that she is. 

The relief at seeing her nearly makes me stumble over, nearly makes me drunk, and I'm on her with a fast desperation I don't even care to identify. 

I bend over her body, covering her with mine. We're both still fully clothed, still sweaty in the June heat, and it makes it dirtier somehow. Coarser. Obscene. 

"Paul," she pleads, her voice breakin, and I don't correct her this time. The game is melting away--into what, though, I'm not completely one-hundred perfect certain. 

"I know exactly what you need, little girl. Hold still."

I straighten up and roll on the condom as fast as I've ever done it in my life, peeling her panties off her skin and kicking them away.

I cup her pussy in my hand with a hard, possessive grip and she wriggles against it, trying to get the friction against her clit, and she's so wet, so fucking wet, that my palm comes back slicked with her.

I use that hand to stroke my swollen cock once, twice, before nudging the shiny latex tip at her slick opening. I remind myself that this is only her second time being fucked, to take it easy on her, and it's with all the unraveling self-control left in me that I refrain from slamming into that tight cunt with one savage thrust. I settle for two savage thrusts instead.

The thick, crown stretchers her, and I get to about halfway in, holding her hips down as she whimpers and tosses underneath me. And then I shove the rest of the way in, wishing that I could listen to her noises forever.

Her long, low cry as I fully seat myself inside her. Her pants and mewls as I roll my hips to feel the wet silk of her around my root. 

And then her eyes-rolling moan as I slide my hand around her hip and start massaging the swollen pearl of her clit. She is amazing like this, bent over my desk like some kind of academic sacrifice, her sweet ass filling one hand while my other hand works her into a frenzy. 

Her hair is a tumbled mess, and her eyes, when they flutter back up at me, are lost and dazed and adoring. And her body around mine, even through the condom, is everything---soft and hot and tight beyond belief. A spark of wonder kindles in my chest that she's letting a miserable bastard like me even fuck her again. That she's still happy and willing to play any kind of game with me after how I've acted towards her this past week.

Christ, what a gift. The spark kindles into a real fire, something possessive and primal ad as certain as the sun and the wind and the sparkling river glinting behind me as I continue to fuck her.

She's _mine_. _All_ mine. Maybe it's just for this one moment, as she starts quivering and fluttering around my cock, or maybe it's only for today. But for now, she's mine, and I want to roar my pleasure at the top of the rooftops at the knowledge. 

I want more of her. More of this. This raw fucking with my hips plowing into her spank-reddened bottom, this sweet clenching around my cock as she cums. And after my own release tears through me, filling the condom with hot and heavy spurts, I barely give her a minute to even breathe. I tear off the condom, scoop her limp and sweaty body into my arms, and carry her up to my bedroom.

"Paul, where--"

"We're not done yet."

*********

I'm feeling ravenous tonight. Insatiable. Because, selfish man that I am, if I'm going to break my own damn rules and break the trust I already have with her father, then I may as well do it thoroughly. And I am very, very thorough when it comes to this....to _her._

I peel off her clothes and explore every exposed contour of her with my mouth. I feast on those abundant tits like I've been fantasizing about them, like I've been stroking myself to the thought of them all week, and I turn her into a wriggling, gasping mess. 

"I-I almost forgot," she breathes out, her eyes glowing in the fading light of the bedroom.

"You forgot what?"

"That your mouth could feel so bloody good there," she whispers as I kiss and lick at the softly curved underside of her breast. "That it would make me want you so much again."

"Then let me make it so that you remember it forever."

I move my lips from the underside to her nipple, tugging gently at the straining tip with my teeth and then drawing it into my mouth for a long, swirling suck. She arches underneath me, a movement that matches us together down below, and before I can do anything about it, she's rubbing her empty pussy against me, lifting her hips and grinding against my growing hardness.

The feel of her wet and soft against my bare cock is like a nightmare and dream all wrapped into one, and for the first time in years, I find that I want to fuck a woman bare.

I want to push into Rey with nothing between us, and I want to see how raw she makes me, how utterly vulnerable she makes me feel. I want to feel every single inch of what she does to me. But most importantly, I want to feel it when I cum inside her, marking her completely, making her completely... _mine._

Mine. And then I duck my head down to kiss along her stomach, suddenly becoming terrified of my own thoughts, terrified beyond doubt that she'll see them.

Terrified that she'll see them and she won't be scared and I won't be scared either and that we'll end up doing something regrettable. There's a very good reason why I fuck with condoms every time. There's a very good reason I fuck with condoms anyways.

I work my way down the gentle curves of her stomach and then over the rise of her pubic bone, kissing and licking all the way. 

"Stop," she gasps. "I'm all sweaty down there, and I really should clean myself if you're going to do that again and---"

"Is this a _red_ stop, or is this you trying to hide yourself from me?"

"It's not a red stop," she clarifies. 

She has no earthly idea how tantalizing she looks like this, her head propped up on a pillow, near-black waves of hair everywhere, her nipples standing to attention and her wet cunt spread before me.

"But I have been sweaty all day long and I---"

"I make the rules here, not you," I inform her in a clipped voice. "In this bed, I'm the professor and you're my student, and I'm going to taste you. And then when I'm done with that..." I pause and lean back up until I at her ear and whisper. "I'm going to fuck you.

She wiggles a little, the color rising in her cheeks. "But...."

"Those are the rules, Miss Johnson. You want to follow my rules, don't you? Don't you want to be a good girl for me?"

God, how she responds to me when I talk to her like this. Like she was made to fit me. Her mouth parts, and her tongue licks out at her lower lip. Her eyes are huge, dark pools pf needy gold and green when she answers me, "Yes, professor."

I make a noise of satisfaction and resume my kissing, using my hands to spread her wide so that she's completely out on display for me. That night in London, I'd been too impatient, too fast---years of celibacy chasing me down and making me weak, and when she broke open my control, she broke open all of it. The restraint. The time I normally took with a woman in bed. But not now. Not tonight.

Tonight, I'm in full control, and I take my time staring at her, using my thumbs to make it so she hides nothing from me. There's no wet secret of hers that I don't want to taste and learn. There's no hollow of her body that I don't want to know my touch. Mine.

I trace every fold with my tongue, I suckle on the firm berry of her clit until she's moaning, and the right before she cums, she sheathe my cock in latex and drive home, kissing her aggressively and deep with a mouth still wet from her pussy. 

"Rey," I grind out, my hips changing from slow rolls to heavy, fast thrusts. "Fuck, Rey, you feel so fucking good around me."

She is completely lost to the drive of me between her legs, her head tossing. "It's too much, Paul," she mumbles, her eyes closed. "I can't hold on---it's too much--"

She cums so hard that she screams, and I feel it all around my cock, a grip so tight that it almost feels like she's trying to push me out. 

It's work to fuck through all that---the most delicious kind of work---and then I cum, it feels like something rips open inside of me. Something that's been held back for far too long. The throbs are so sudden and so strong that I find myself slumping over her, unable to keep my own body upright as I fill the condom and something rearranges itself deep within my chest. 

After I clean us up, she looks like she thinks she should leave, and I climb into bed and anchor her to me with one arm around her stomach, pulling her back to my chest and her perfect rump into my hips.

My knees tuck in behind her knees, and her long hair is everywhere like a sea of floral-smelling shadows

"Paul?" she asks after a moment.

"It's just the oxytocin," I mumble against her neck, and that seems to settle her. "Shh, try to get some sleep, Rey. We have another long day ahead of us tomorrow."

But it takes a very long time for me to fall asleep, and the reason why is that I know something she doesn't. It's not the fucking oxytocin, at all. It's because I'm not ready to let her go yet. 


	9. Chapter 9

REY JOHNSON

I wake up sore between the legs and feeling.. _..happy._ The kind of happy that has no real reason to it. The kind of happy that suffuses your blood before you even open your eyes. And when I do finally open my eyes to summer sunshine and Paul's neatly furnished room, I'm smiling.

Before I'm even all the way conscious, I know that he's gone. But I'm not upset by it---I've noticed that he takes himself on punishingly long runs most mornings; and anyway, I'm glad I get to know this very, _very_ girlish moment to myself.

The moment where I roll over and smell the sheets and squeal inwardly to myself. _Paul Sevier fucked me again._

And more than that---he's been wanting me as much as I've been wanting him. Every glimpse I stole of his eyes and his American mouth, he too was stealing glimpses of me back. He was wanting me, craving me....listening to me finger myself night after night vivid torment because of _him._ The thought makes me curl and blush with agony-agonized shame and agonized delight.

To be caught doing such things is beyond humiliating, and yet to know that those same things aroused and haunted him fills me with a smug feminine pride. To know that the person you want wants you back?

It's like a pure life arrowing right through the middle of me. Like I'm entirely new. An entirely new Rey--not one who's too much but one who's just the right amount. Just right for a man like Paul.

The thought makes me blush anew with how stupidly juvenile it all is, with how many unspoken hopes are woven through it, and I push myself out of bed to get away from it. From the wanting more, from the wanting things that Paul almost certainly won't want to give.

 _Sophisticated_ \---I still need to be sophisticated. So I have my best sophisticated face on as I go downstairs after I shower and then get dressed.

I enter the kitchen looking for the perfect mix of cool and sultry, prepared to have a cool and sultry breakfast and...Paul's not here. _Probably still out on a run,_ I think, but I deflate a little bit. Which is dumb. Why am I acting so dumb?

Chiding myself, I make a cup of tea with the kettle--see, I'm learning---and then decide to get to work. That will certainly please him, I think, to come back and find me already at my desk. Maybe it will please him enough to let me have his cock again....

But then I go into the study, and he's already there, and his very presence reverberates though my bones like a gong's been struck. The bent head, still proud, still haughty, even craned over his work.

The long, strong fingers and the carved swells of muscle pressing against his shirt as he breathes. Those eyelashes so long on his cheeks and the prismatic eyes themselves. Eyes like I've never seen before I met him. Eyes as complicated and mysterious as the man they belong to. 

I offer up a shy smile, my heart going a million miles a minute. I'm not sure what to say or what to do; all of this is completely unchartered territory for me. What do all these sophisticated, sexual women say to their lover-slash-bosses the morning after a tryst? _Hello?_ Or perhaps _I'm wet just from looking at you. Can we do that again?_

But I can't be a sophisticated, a sexual woman. I can only be Rey. So I beam at him. "Hi," I say, giddily and somewhat lamely. 

His mouth tugs down in a scowl. "I'm glad to see that you're ready to start your work for the day."

"I didn't have my alarm set. I was---"

I was sleeping in bed with you, I want to say, but something inside me stops me. His facial expression maybe, growing colder by the second, or the way his beautiful hands have gone still over his notebook. Rey that I am, I can't help but try again.

"I slept so well, though. Last night was---"

"Last night was a mistake," he cuts me off. His voice is glacial, like ice, the words sharp enough to cut me with their jagged corners. "And it _won't_ happen again."

It takes too long for his words and their meaning to make sense in my mind, but once they do, I think I'd rather be drawn and quartered. I hate being so expressive, I _hate_ it, and I hate that he can probably see the whip-cut words across my face. I duck my head so he can't see the shame, the hurt, the confusion. 

_Keep your dignity, Rey, because it's the only comfort you'll be able to hang on to._

"Of course," I mumble, making my way over to my desk while trying not to let my tears fall.

Trying not to let my mind race with the inevitable questions. The _whys._ Am I not pretty enough? Thin enough? Cool enough? Good enough? Was I really that bad in bed? Was it terrible sex and I had no idea because I'm so inexperienced? 

Or, oh God, what if I did something embarrassing in my sleep? Clung to him or drooled on him---or worse?

"You'll find a credit card on your desk," Paul says to the side of my face once I'm seated. "For archival materials. Like I said before, there's no budget. Use whatever you need."

And those are the last words he says to me all morning. My first jobs were as research assistants to my father's friends and of course to my father himself. Since the age of fourteen, I've spent summers and winter breaks running photocopies and flagging promising entries in annotated bibliographies. I'm used to working in rooms with humans so deep in thought that they forget I'm even there.

I'm used to working in silence. But this....this is different. Every moment feels amplified, as if it's under a jeweler's glass, and every noise seems to quake through the room with geologic force. 

Even the burble of the river outside the open window is deafening. When I set down a handful of books and one drops on the floor, it's as if I've knocked the house over. 

The air between us thrums with unhappy electricity, and it takes all morning for me to get to a point where I think I might not start crying. How can he be so cold? How can he be so cruel? And how--how--after all that I've scolded myself, could I still have gotten so attached to him?

Gotten all happy and hopeful and....I don't know....oxytocin-y? _Stupid, stupid, so fucking stupid, Rey._

I make him lunch as usual, and he eats it blindly as usual, and I hate how I still crave something from him in this moment---a compliment or a grunt of approval or anything. I hate how I still want to be his good girl. His fucking teacher's pet. 

*********

It's well after lunch when I find the note. It's in a pile of books under an ottoman, and despite the entire terrible morning, I can't help but give a cluck of librarian censure when I find them.

The books have been shoved under the ottoman so haphazardly that few of the pages are bent up, and one of the leather-bound volumes has a permanent dent in the spine. With a breathless sigh, I gather the neglected babies to my chest and carry them over to my desk, where I'll catalog them for the database.

Which is when I notice the tiny folded note slips out. I set the books down on my desk and go back to retrieve it, painfully aware of how Paul's eyes are not on me, aware of how studiously he ignores me.

It burns, that rebuffing, burns like I'm being carefully dipped into scalding water, and I know have the red cheeks and swollen, tender heart to prove it.

I try to ignore him back, pretend that I don't care that the only man I've ever had sex with now seems to hate my fucking guts, and I can over the piece of paper as I walk back over to my desk. Usually these loose bits of paper are normally receipts, if not from Paul's purchase, then a previous owner's purchase from years back. Other times, it might be one of Paul's own personal notes---a quick scrawl about why he bought the book or a more detailed write-up outlining the contents.

But instead of Paul's messy, spiky hand, I see words in pretty and symmetrical loops, written in the kind of pen that leaves little flourishes at the end of every single word.

_Paul,_

_You hardly ever remember the things that you say in bed, but I do. I sincerely do hope this is the proof_

_Your girl,_

_Jyn_

My stomach twists, hiking itself up into the cavity of my chest. There's no mistaking the subtext to that particular note. There's no miscategorization here. No shelving this on the wrong shelf. This Jyn, whoever she was, was Paul's lover. 

There's no date on the note, although it is the tiniest bit yellowed in one corner, which is to be expected if it's been stuck in a decaying book for any length of time. 

There's also no real way of telling which book the note fell out of, although I do notice that all the books from this pile deal with the subculture of Victorian erotica. I flip through one of them and find my breath tangling around twists in my stomach.

Lots of spanking in here. _Lots_ of it. Drawings and old photographs of women bent over, their petticoats all rucked up in heaps around their waists.

Stories of wives and debutantes and schoolgirls getting disciplined, sometimes in very erotic circumstances and something in simply morality tales. What had Paul told this Jyn in bed that prompted her to buy these sort of things for him? Had he been talking about research as they nodded off toward sleep? Or had it been something a little more intimate than that?

Did he play the same bedroom games with Jyn that he had played with me? _Well, of course he did,_ that voice inside my head says. _You think he just decided to spank a complete stranger without ever having done it before?_

The whole fucking thing---that professor and his good-girl game---is obviously Paul's kink, and I might have been a virgin, and even I know that kinks don't just pop up overnight.

Paul must have done it with other woman, which somehow nettles me more than thinking of him merely fucking another woman. A bitter envy poisons my blood, and I walk over to his desk and drop the note onto the page he's currently reading.

"I found this," I say. "Looks important." It's almost worth my own pain to see the flash of anguish in his brown eyes. "Can I expect find more things from Jyn around the place?" I ask, too upset to even care that I've finally succeeded in sounding very aloof and reserved right now. "Would you like me to set them all aside or save them for you to look through later?"

Paul picks up the note, his jaw working to the side, his hands so still that he might be a statue of himself. Then he gives the not a vicious crumble and drops it in the small trash can by his desk.

"Don't bother," he says shortly. "I don't want to see them."

And then he goes back to pretending that I don't exist again. Perverse satisfaction buoys me for a moment or two. Whoever this Jyn is, she's not a lover of Paul's any longer it seems.

But soon I'm weighed down with razor-sharp anguish again. Well, at least he _talked_ to Jyn in bed. I was only ravished within an inch of my life---not that I'm complaining here---and then summarily scorned for it the next day like the whole damn thing was my fault....and yet I am complaining about that.

He won't even look at me now, as if I'm beneath his fully undivided attention, and yet I never feel like he's not aware of me. of where I move and when I move, of how I sit and how I write. 

I just can't tell if his awareness is one of cold annoyance or of burning dislike. It can't be anything else---still, I hate either of those options.

It's the slowest afternoon of my life, and as it drones on, too warm and narrated by the drone of a bee that gets stuck inside the study and bumbles about while Silencer watches, I begin to wonder if I can really do this for the rest of them summer. Can I sit in a room with a man that I want, a man I gave my body to, and have him treat me like this? No.

I'd rather be spanked every single day, because an entire summer of Paul treating me the way he's treated me today---that would be the real masochism. After six o'clock rolls over, I close down my laptop, coming to a final decision.

Dinner with Paul would be an exercise in heartache and misery, and I can't bear it. I won't do it to myself. If he wants to ignore me, I'll make myself very easy to ignore. 

**********

"May I sit here?" a warm voice asks, and I look up to see a very-good looking man in a button-down shirt and trousers standing next to me at the bar inside the Slaughtered Lamb pub. 

"Oh, of course," I say with, and his face opens up with an answering grin. For he too, is American----like Paul.

"You're British."

I give him a sheepish smile as I then pat the stool next to me. "Take a seat, and I'll tell you all about it."

"That's an invitation no man can refuse." He chuckles, and there's a little bit of heat to his gaze as his eyes make a surreptitious flick over my body. 

We both order drinks, and we start chatting away--he does some type of accounting for a local quarrying company back in the States, and I explain why I'm spending my summer before heading back the University helping a scholar with some research.

He seems rather charmed by me, and I can't help but wonder if this is how it would have happened if I'd made it to the Goose and Gander that night. If I'd met any other handsome man--American or British, anyone other than Paul.

If it would've been as easy as I'd planned on it being---just two adults sharing a night together and then going their separate ways. Not whatever it is that Paul and I currently have going on. But at least I scored a point for my dignity. I stood up and the left the study as if I were simply going to get another mug of tea, and then I got my wallet and left the house, walking the short, pleasant route up to Blakewell and indulging in some Indian food before I decided to stop by the Slaughtered Lamb or a much-needed drink.

I hope that Paul enjoyed his fucking dinner alone. And I hope that he enjoys the rest of his summer alone too, because I've made up my fucking mind. I'm not going to stay.

It stings and it rankles, having to give this up just because he's a colossal dickhead, but nothing's worth being this miserable. 

I'll go back tonight, announce to him that I'm leaving, and then tomorrow I'll be on my way back home, away from him and his perfect eyes and his perfect mouth and his perfect everything that even now sets my body on fire just thinking about it.

"So have you been enjoying your stay?" Hux the Quarry Guy says, and I feel a stab of guilt when I realize this isn't the first time Hux's asked the question.

"Yes, I have been. I don't normally get out of my own little village that often," I give him my renewed focus and another smile, which he seems to enjoy very much. "It's so beautiful here, so much more beautiful than i could ever have imagined it to be---I mean, it's just as green here as it back home, but I don't know, I like it better here."

"Well, I'm currently renting a flat out this way, I'd be more than happy to show you around sometime," Hux says, his voice going an octave lower. "I'd really hate for you to miss anything."

I'm about to tell him that I appreciate it but I can't because an arrogant professor broke my heart and now I have to go home early, but I'm stopped by the sudden appearance of a man standing right behind Hux.

A man with chocolate-brown eyes who's practically vibrating with rage. "Paul?" I ask as he takes hold of my elbow. 

"We're going home, Miss Johnson," Paul says through clenched teeth, and on, it's terrible, but hearing him call me Miss Johnson again makes me want to squirm in the best kind of way.

"Um may I help you, dude?" Hux asks, looking a bit alarmed for my sake, but Paul cuts him a glare so ferocious that Hux withers immediately, and I can't say that I blame him.

"Only Miss Johnson here can help me by coming home, which she's doing right now, so any help from you is quite unnecessary, thank you very much." Paul pronounces stonily. "If you'll kindly excuse us.

I don't have to go back with him. Not only could I struggle free of I wanted, but I think if I said _red,_ he'd relinquish me right away. He'd let me go. But I do go with him, flashing an apologetic smile at Hux and letting Paul guide me out the door of the pub, grateful that I've already paid my tab. 

"What were you doing in there?" he demands the minute we're out in the open air.

"Um getting a drink. Is that a bloody crime all of a sudden?"

"No, I meant, what were you doing with that man?"

I roll my eyes and start to pull away, but Paul pins me against the outside wall of the pub, one hand on either side of my head and his body a shield of angry make in front of me.

"Were you going to let him kiss you?" he asks in a dangerous voice. "We're you going to let him fuck you?"

I wanted to say _yes._ I wanted to make Paul angry and miserable, just as he's clearly made me. I want to prove to him that I _am_ sophisticated, that I do have dignity, and that I'm just as good at ignoring him as he is at ignoring me.

But like earlier today, I find I can only be Rey. Honest, embarrassing Rey. 

"No," I admit, looking away.

"Fuck right, you weren't," Paul growls. "He's not allowed to fucking touch you."

"And why the hell do you care all of a sudden?" I ask, searching his face. It's near dusk, still light enough to be warm but dark enough for shadows to dance in this eyes. "You made it very clear today how you feel about me."

"And that's what you think?"

"Yes," I shoot back hotly. "Yes, that's what I think. What else?"

"What else?" he breathes. "Not that you drive me fucking crazy?! Not that I can't fucking work, I can't focus on the task at hand. I can't even _think_ at all when you're around me?"

We stare at each other, chests rising and falling with jagged breaths, our mouths nearly close enough to touch. To kiss. My lips parts and my eyes hood low, ready for him to lay waste to me with his skilled mouth and tongue. Ready for those hard, greedy kisses he delivered with such furious conviction for a man normally so cold.

But he doesn't kiss me. When I open my eyes all the way in confused disappointment, he's glaring at me like I've taken a match to his rare books and set them all ablaze.

"We're going home _now,_ Miss Johnson," he seethes, and I don't argue with him, because the minute I get back to his house, I'm packing up my suitcase and _leaving._

I don't care if I have to sleep in some open-air train station. I am not staying with him a second longer. I'm fuming as I climb into Paul's car for the short ride back to his house. Fuming and rehearsing my grand speech about leaving and how Paul Sevier can go fuck himself to high-heaven.

But when we pull up to the cottage and I get out of the car, Paul meets me at my side, crowding me against the car door. I expect more of his anger, or maybe that we'd go back to the cutting chill of earlier, but the man standing in front of me is neither angry nor cold.

He's breathing hard, and there's something in his eyes that looks bruised and tender and young. "I want you, Rey, and I can't even begin to tell you how much that terrifies me." 

Terrifies _him?_ It's so hard to imagine this marble-cut man being terrified of anything, much less _me._ "I'm afraid that I don't understand."

He gives me a bleak kind of laugh at that. "No. You wouldn't, because you're still happy and ready for the world. You're still unhurt. And I--I woke up this morning feeling absolutely horrified at the thought that I may have stolen that from you forever."

I stare at him, beyond baffled. "What? By sleeping with me?" 

He runs an agitated hand through his thick, long mane of hair. "By sleeping with you and.....and all the other things."

The front garden is a dark haven of flowers and rich green, clean-cut grass, lit only by the faint kitchen light coming out of the cottage, so it's hard to be sure----but I think I see color in Paul's cheeks. _He's ashamed_ , I realize, and the thought it so bizarre to me, so foreign, that it takes me a minute to absorb it.

 _He's ashamed of what he likes to do in bed._ And abruptly, everything else---his behavior today, my leaving---is quickly set aside. Or, rather, filtered through the light of this new information.

"Paul," I say, catching his eyes. "I _liked_ what we did. Both times. It's sexy to me, and..." I search for the right word. "It's not any more complicated than that. I like it. Who the bloody hell cares of I like it because I was raised by professors or because I've worked for professors before or because I'm an incurable teacher's pet? It's fun to me, and I fully consented wholeheartedly. What more can there be to it than that?"

It's Paul's turn to stare, and he's staring at me like he can't believe that I am even real---that I actually exist in this cold, cruel world.

"What?" I ask, suddenly self-conscious.

"You," he says, just like he said yesterday afternoon, except this time it's not dark or tortured. It's wondering. Possessive. The way he says _you_ might as well be _mine._

"Me?" I ask, and it's ridiculous, but I've been waiting to hear that word my entire life. _You._

"You," he repeats, and then his mouth slants over mine, hot and greedy, just like I've come to crave, and within an instant, I'm against the car, my legs around his waist and his arms crushing me tight to him.

I have so much more to ask him, so much more to wonder about, but it's like everything else shrinks to the points of contact between us: his mouth so searingly thorough and his lean lips between my thighs and his wide hands splayed over my ass. And where his erection pushes, thick and heavy, between my legs. 

"Professor," I whimper into his mouth, and he shudders underneath my touch. 

"You don't.....you don't have to," he says. "I want you any way that you'll let me have you. Even without the games."

"I'll call you whatever I like," I shoot back stubbornly, biting at his lip. "It's my name too, you see? My fun too, whether I want you as Paul or as my professor."

And again he shudders, but this time it's not only with lust. The wonder is back in his eyes again, the awe. "How are you even real?" he says, biting at my neck. "How can you possibly be real?" 

Suddenly, I'm being carried, and I think it's inside, I think it's to his king-sized bed, but we end up tumbling over right in the lush grass below a cottage window, blown summer flowers bobbing all around us. His strong arms and hands protect me as we collapse into the law, and above me is only the shape of a beautiful man outlined by millions of stars.

"I want you," he manages in between searing kisses. "Now."

"Yes," I say eagerly, tugging at his clothes. "You won't hear any _reds_ from me." And it's the first time I hear a laugh from him that's a real and open, not bleak at all. "And please tell me that you have a condom handy," I say, biting at his earlobe. "I can't wait a moment longer, Paul."

"You won't have to," he vows, pulling up. "You're all mine now."

There are no houses around, and even if there were, we'd be completely surrounded by flowers and shrubs, but it's still insanely exhilarating to be like this, tumbled and tousled onto the lawn with my skirt bunched up around my thighs and Paul on his knees between my legs, rolling on a condom.

The feeling of being exposed, of being _filthy,_ is enough to have me ready before Paul even manages to touch me.

"Oh you're such a good girl," he murmurs when he tests my pussy to see if I'm wet and finds out exactly how wet I really am. "Such a good girl."

I squirm under his touch. "Paul...."

"I know girl. Hold still for me."

With a thick, urgent stretch, he fills me, and together we fuck under the stars until I cry out and he joins me in long, jerking pulses, and we roll giggling and grass-stained off the lawn and into the house. 


	10. Chapter 10

PAUL SEVIER

I'm insatiable again, but I don't care. Maybe I'm making up for lost time, or maybe it's the heady pleasure of finding a woman who loves the way I am in bed. Or maybe it's just her.

Maybe it's the enthusiastic and boldly vulnerable girl who disarms me at every turn. This girl who warms my chest just with her smiles alone and with the way she holds her pen and her fucking adorable watch, who approaches dusty books with a zeal usually reserved for sex and religion. She gets under my skin, and I hate it and I love it all at once.

And for man who makes his living from words---studying them, analyzing them, writing them---I can't find the right words now to explain all this to her.

That I want her, that's she all mine, and that if she wanted, she could pluck out what's left of my cold, dead heart and eat it, and I'd let her. So I settle for telling her with body. With my face between her legs, with my lips running along her thighs and stomach, with my mouth on her sweet tits. 

She begs to be spanked again, and this time I do it with her on all fours and my cock in her mouth, arranging her so that I can easily swat her ass from the side as she continues to pleasure me. Then we fuck again. And again.

The early hours of the morning find us showered and sated, with her in my arms as I toy idly with her hair. 

I don't pretend that it's only the oxytocin this time around, and she doesn't ask, but I ask the question myself anyway. _What the hell are you doing with her, Paul? What exactly are you doing?_

And the answer is that I don't have a proper answer, and it really, really bothers the hell out of me.

"Why are you ashamed of what you like in bed, Paul?" Rey asks softly, dreamily, like someone on the cusp of sleep.

I immediately tense up around her, the question taking me by surprise. Once again I'm struck by how _easy_ this is for her, by how she can just ask and talk about these sort of things like they're not....like they're not taboo. Like they're not twisted. 

She senses my reticence and turns toward me, tilting her head up so that she can see my face. "Paul?"

I open my mouth and close it, the words just as elusive as there were earlier tonight. 

"Was it Jyn?" Rey asks, and she's so fearless, so brave, and it suddenly seems important to tell her so.

"You have so much courage, Rey," I murmur, stroking her cheek. "In your shoes, I'd never be able to ask about a lover's former flame."

Rey blinks up at me in a very endearing manner. "What can I say, Sevier, I'm very plucky when it comes to these sort of things."

"I was going to say very pugnacious. Or perhaps even pesky."

She laughs, as always, at my surliness, and I melt a little. I want to be brave and happy like her; I want to---I don't know--reward her, I suppose. Not like a professor rewards a student but how a lover rewards his lover. Vulnerability for vulnerability. Strength for strength. Honesty for honesty. 

"We me at the college I work for now," I say finally. "We met, and it seemed like, oh, I don't know, all those stereotypes about falling in love with someone. Like the world grew a thousand times bigger."

I successfully keep most of the old bitterness from my voice, but there's enough that Rey still notices, a little line appearing between her eyebrows. I reach over and smooth it with my thumb.

"Was she the first person you ever got kinky with?" Rey asks, and again that work _kinky_ , like it's just a word and not a rebuke. Not something I've tortured myself with in the years since Jyn left me.

"She was."

Rey runs her hand in lazy circles over the muscles of my chest, playing slowly over the lean ridges of my abs. It feels impossibly nice. "And? Did she like it? The kinky stuff?"

"At first," I say, and the words leave me heavily. "At first. It was new to me---all of it was new. I was only just realizing what I liked and what I needed, and I think it all just became too real in the end."

"Because you were her professor?"

"No, I wasn't her professor," I reply. "She was mine."

Rey's fingers still on my skin, and I can tell I've surprised her with this bit of unexpected information. "She was?"

"We met as I was studying for my PhD. I'd like to say that we restrained ourselves as best as we could until such a time when a liaison was ethical, but that would be a bold-faced lie."

"Believe me, you wouldn't be the first couple in the world to start out that way," Rey says, and it warms me a little bit to see this young thing trying to comfort me. "So the roles were reversed? Did she do the spanking?"

There's a hint of a tease in her voice, and I give her a mock-stern tweak to the chin. "I always do the spanking here, Miss Johnson. And I think the reversal of our power dynamic in the classroom is what excited her at first. For her, it was novel. To me, it became necessary." 

I find that I miss Rey's hand moving over my skin, and I wish she'd keep stroking me as I talked. Even with her, the first person I've felt a desire to open up to in years, it's not an easy story to tell.

"We had about a year together. And then she got pregnant."

Rey stiffens up in my arms. "Y-You have a child with her?"

"Miss Johnson, listen whenever your professor is talking."

It's the closest I've come to a joke around her, and the answering smile on her face is worth everything. I resolve to do and say whatever I have to in order to make her smile more often. I could spend the rest of my life waking up to that smile and that's my plan.

"I was dazed when she told first me that she was pregnant," I continue. "Too dazed to be either elated or terrified, I think, but I offered her everything that I could. I offered her all of my support, I offered to quit my PhD program or transfer to another university like Cambridge or St. Andrews so that I could marry her. I was so ready to give up any part of my life I had to in order to make it work."

"And what dis she say?"

"That she wanted a paternity test," I say, and in my mind I can still see us arguing in that dimly lit flat, the rain pouring outside and the blank expression on Jyn's face. 

"What?" Rey asks.

"The baby wasn't even mine," I explain.

"But then-- _oh."_ I can see as she puts it together. The timelines, the evidence of infidelity. "Oh."

"The thing is, she didn't want it to be mine. She was vey blunt about that. She was very blunt about....well, a lot of things, actually. She'd been unhappy for quite some time, hence the cheating part of it."

"That fucking bitch," Rey mutters, and her ferocious loyalty makes something in my chest impossibly light but tight too, like a balloon. 

"Well, it was partially my own fault. We'd grown into our bedroom games together, you see, and sometimes when something happens organically, you tend to forget to communicate about it. And what's what happened with Jyn. I was happy, so I assumed that she was happy too."

"Would she have been happy without the kink, you think?"

A fair question and one I've asked myself every day since that fight. All the names she called me, all the reasons that she didn't want to raise a child with me, they've rattled around my mind for so long that they've become part of me, like a tree growing around a fence.

_Degenerate. Deviant. Pervert._

"It's kind of hard to say. I offered that too, to give up the professor games, but she refused....I think she resented me too much by then. The last time she spoke to me was an email informing me the test had proved the baby was his."

"Did you want the baby to be yours?"

I sigh. "I don't know. Yes...and no. I think the idea of an child with woman you love always seems thrilling, but in retrospect, she didn't love me and I'm not even sure that I even loved her. Not in a lasting way, at least."

She moves her head, nodding against my shoulder in understanding, her hair sliding all silky and sweet smelling over my skin. Either the memory's teeth have blunted over the years or something about Rey's eases the ache, but I find that I feel okay about the past.

About Jyn. It's hard to feel upset about anything that led to this moment, with Rey's soft curves tucked against my side and her hands on my body like it belongs to her and only her. 

"So what happened after you broke up? Did you do the kink thing with anyone else?"

I think back into the intervening years between Jyn and now. I was a mess, both personally and professionally, and I owe a lot to be friends who saw me through, like Rey's father; who helped me in every way that she could.

"I saw a few people, nothing too serious. The kind of hookups you arrange online, that kind of thing. It got old after a while because it wasn't the same with someone I also liked and respected on an intellectual level."

She grins up at me. "So does this mean that you like me, Professor Sevier?"

I give her a playful scowl and tug on her hair. "Don't push your luck there, Miss Johnson." 

She nestles back into me with a little yawn. "That explains why you're such a stickler about the condoms," she says. "The whole baby thing."

"Precisely so."

"Well, do you want babies someday? Or has that all been ruined for you?"

"So blunt you are, Miss Johnson." 

But she's not asking in a fishing sort of way---rather like she genuinely wants to know, and I think about it. About how Jyn was recently promoted to department head at my university and how there was no avoiding her then. No avoiding the very pregnant belly with her third child inside and her giant glinting diamond wedding ring.

I took this sabbatical right after. _Deviant. Degenerate._

"No," I finally answer. "I think that door has shut for me....for good.."

"That's so sad," Rey says sleepily. "Everyone deserves to have their own little bundle of joy running around the place. Even you, Paul. Everyone always says it's the best decision of their lives or at least that's what my parent's said to me growing up."

Yes, I suppose it is quite sad, but I can't even imagine going through all that again. No, no way. Especially not the way it all went to hell with Jyn. I couldn't even begin to imagine what would happen if this was between myself and Rey. The hope and the joy, and then the same and the disgust....the heartbreak. No, it was just better to just to avoid it entirely. 

But I can't deny the fact that I've imagined---more than I probably should've---the idea of Rey walking around the cottage, her belly swollen with _our_ child. It's a thought that seems to keep revealing itself to me more and more frequently over these last couple of days.

And that scares the absolute living-shit out of me. How could I ever be a good father, doing what I do? No child would want that in their life. 

After a few minutes I say, "Honestly, I don't think kinky professors get to have babies and wives of their own," and I'm rather proud of myself for saying the word _kinky_ out loud....until I realize that the girl next to me is fast asleep and snoring against my chest. 


	11. Chapter 11

REY JOHNSON

When I wake up the next morning, Paul is across the pillow from me, his beautiful golden-brown eyes all soft and gentle on my face. 

"Good morning, Miss Johnson," he says with a smile that's small but open and real, and I feel my heart dipping low inside me, like it's weighed down with happiness and is going to sink right through the mattress.

"Good morning," I answer in a sleep-croak, and then I make a face. 

My breath must be awful, not to mention the makeup I surely have smeared around my face. Of course, he looks gorgeous right now, what with that perfect, haughty face and his even more perfect hair. I try to roll away, and he catches me around the waist.

"No," I moan, ducking my head into my pillow to try and hide my morning self. "I need to clean up."

"And you may, but I have to know something, Rey, were you planning on leaving me last night."

His voice is husky from sleep too, but it's also more vulnerable than I've ever heard him. Gentler. As if he's already bracing himself for the answer he desperate doesn't want to hear. 

"Yes, I was." I say honestly, because I do like to be honest. "But not anymore."

His brow furrows the slightest bit, and it's just so unfairly handsome on him that I simply can't stand it. I kiss him with my terrible morning mouth and get out of bed.

"So you're staying?" he asks, and the vulnerability is louder than ever, filling in the spaces between the words and lighting something very young and sad-looking in his face. 

"Yes, Paul. I'm staying."

Relief illuminates his face, and I'm reward with another one of those massive smiles, so big there are lines around his mouth and eyes when he makes it.

"Even with the---" I see him struggle to say the word, but he manages it with only a little bit of a blush--"the kinky stuff?"

"Especially because of the kinky stuff," I assure him with a wink, and then I go find a shower and a toothbrush, a big smile on my own face. After I'm all cleaned up and ready to work, I find myself strangely slow to go down to the office. Which Paul will I find there? 

It seemed like we connected last night and this morning, but I thought that the first time we made love here at cottage, and I was wrong. I don't think I can bear it if I open the door to find another cold Paul again. Not after we've shared together. So it's with a deep breath and a lot bravery---and a pat on Silencer's head for good luck---that I open the door to Paul's study and walk inside. 

He's already behind the desk and bent over his work, all tousled hair and long fingers and wide shoulders. That old-fashioned ink pen winks in the sunlight as it moves in deft motions across the page.

He finishes something in his notebook, ends with an efficient little flourish, and then designs to notice my presence. When he looks up, his mouth is in that sharp frown I normally find so irresistible, although it terrifies me right now.

"Miss Johnson," he says brusquely, and my heart plummets down to my feet. 

Is that what this is going to be like? Is today really going to be a repeat of yesterday? Am I being rejected once again? But then Paul leans back in his chair and studies me in a way that I recognize, with his pulse jumping in his throat and his eyes gleaming with hunger. 

"Come here a moment. I need a word."

I don't gave to pretend to be shy or uncertain as I walk to the desk. My chest is being hammered at with a heartbeat that's completely out of control, pumping every kind of hormone every which way through my body, and my mind is racing through ever single possibility. Is this a game he's playing? Or is this real?

Did he come down to the office and find something I'd done wrong? Did he come down here and suddenly realize he wanted me to leave after all?

When I get to his desk, he impatiently gestures for me to come around the other side, and so I do with some worry, biting on my lip. 

"We need to have a talk about your work," he says, pointing down to a paper on the desk. 

I'm already puzzled because this isn't my work---but his. My work is all databases and bookshelves, and this is just a paper with a single line written across it in ink pen. When I get closer, however, I see what's written on the paper, and then I'm biting my lip for an entirely different reason. 

_Red means stop._

I look up at him, and while he's still frowning, there's a palpable thrum of excited lust all around him. _This is a game,_ I realize. And he wants to make absolutely sure it's okay with me that we play.

He wants to check, and I love how careful he is for a man who seems so aloof. How can he think he's so twisted inside when he's clearly so concerned about my safety and emotional comfort? And as been ever since our first night together in the rain? _He's such a good man,_ I think, _and he doesn't even know it._

This Jyn hurt him too much for him to see that his kinks don't make him some kind of depraved freak. They might make him dirty, yes, unique maybe---but dirty unique in a way that fit me perfectly, and I'm going to prove it to him.

I'm going to show him how much the filthy whorls and loops of his personality fascinate me. How well they feed me and please my inner teacher's pet.

"I don't see the problem with my assignment, Professor," I say, giving him my best innocent face. "I thought I followed all the instructions that you gave to me."

"You didn't," he says shortly. "And I'm afraid there's no time left for you to rework your assignment."

"Please," I say, putting my hands down in front if me and twisting them. 

I'm a little surprised at how easily it comes to me, my role in all of this, but it's because I really do want to please him and it's so easy to imagine how unhappily desperate that I'd feel in these circumstances if I failed to do so. 

"Please, I'll do anything. Just please, don't give me a bad grade."

He studies me, propping his head against his dingers and letting his dark eyes roam over my body with predatory leisure. "Anything, huh?" he murmurs. "Do you really need the grade so badly?"

"I do. Please, you know that I do." I cast around for what I might really say if I were in some kind of academic trouble, letting the sharp judgement in his gaze affect me like posion.

I feel so ashamed, as if I really have messed up an assignment, and I also feel so fucking turned on that I can't even think straight. "I'll even do an extra assignment if I have to! Two assignments!" I add when he starts to shake his head. 

"That won't work, unfortunately," he says. "Unless--"

I don't even have to pretend to light up, that's how real this all feels to me. "Yes? Whatever it is, I'll do it! I promise I will."

"Fine," he sighs, "but I must warn you, it's highly unusual. I daresay that you won't be making the same mistakes with your paper again after this."

"Yes, sir."

His pulse jumps above the collar of his blue button-down. He likes that a lot. 

"Tell me, are you wearing panties beneath that dress, Miss Johnson."

"P-Professor?"

"Take them off now. You won't need them for this."

"B-But, sir--" I pretend to protest, even though inside I'm already squirming with absolute delight.

Already thinking of his palm on my backside and his long, thick cock pumping inside me. He cuts me a look that brooks no argument.

"This is your grade. If you want to fix it, this is how you'll do it."

I give him my best impression of a timid pout, although, I think he can see the grin threatening to break through as I shimmy out of my black-lace panties. He holds out an imperious hand, taking them expressionally and putting them in his back pock. 

"My bra too?"

"Bra too."

I take off my bra from under my dress, a little clumsily, wondering is I should just peel off the whole dress but deciding that I should probably follow his instructions literally for now. It does feel quite lewd after I hand him the bra, standing there in a thin summer dress with absolutely nothing underneath. 

The soft jersey against my sensitive nipples only pulls them tighter and tighter, and my breasts feel obscene like his, heavy and loose and hard-tipped.

Paul seems to agree, his eyes darkening as he takes in my curves under my dress. "You have a filthy little body, Miss Johnson. It'd fucking profane. It makes me think all of these shameful thoughts, and do you know what happens to a man whenever he thinks thoughts like I'm thinking right now?"

I shake my head at him, even though my eyes drop down to his lap. I know exactly what he's referring to---I mean how could I not notice _it?_

"That's right," he says. "My cock gets so hard and it needs to fucking cum."

*********

He gives me a dazzling smile and reaches out to squeeze my hand once before settling back into his flinty look from earlier. I lick my lips instinctively at the the thought, and he growls.

"Up on the desk."

I'd expected to go over his lap, so my hesitation is real. "S-Sir?"

"You heard me, Rey." The use of my full name isn't lost on me---he means business now, and I'd better listen and listen good.

And honestly, I wouldn't have it any other way.....although the punishment for not listening might be kind of fun too. I sit down on the edge of the desk facing him, keeping my skirt primly around my knees, which of course he doesn't allow for long. 

He grabs at the hem and pushes it up to my waist, separating my knees with an impatient hand. The kiss of coolish morning air against my wet and swollen cunt is nearly unbearable---almost as unbearable as his wicked gaze taking in my most feminine place. He wastes no time at all in inspecting my pussy, rubbing me with his long fingers and then spreading me open to see if I glisten for him yet. 

I do. I can hear it as he moves his fingers over me, and I take a strange kind of pride in showing off how wet I get for him, now needy and slutty he makes me feel. I don't want to doubt ever that his needs are also my needs---that they get me off surely as they do him.

"You are so fucking filthy," he swears, and I can see how fast his chest heavens under his button-down shirt. "You like this, don't you? You fucking wanted it."

"Yes," I breathe, my head lolling to the side as one thick finger probes gently inside. "I wanted it so bad."

"I fucking knew it. I've seen the way you watch me in class, Miss Johnson. It's so improper. It's very wrong."

"I-I'm sorry. I just can't help it." I whimper, lost to our game and to the skilled massage of his finger gently massaging inside my pussy.

"I bet you even failed your assignment on purpose, just to provoke me into punishing you."

"I had to," I gasp. The heel of his palm is rolling against my clit now, and my legs are spread as wide as they'll go as I shamelessly fuck his entire hand. "I-I didn't know how else to get you to notice me."

"You think that I didn't notice you? Those eyes of yours, so innocent, and with that mouth that just begs for a cock? You think that I didn't notice those wanton tits? How they spill over your bra when you bend over? How they jiggle like Jell-O when you move?" 

He breaks off on his own groan now, and I can see the painful-looking outline of his dick in his trousers, pressing so hard against the fabric that the shape of the flared crown is visible.

"I think you need to be taught a lesson or two, you filthy girl," he growls. "I think you need to fix the mess you've made."

"A-Anything," I say, bucking wildly against his hand. I'm so close, so very close. "Anything you want."

He removes his hand so suddenly that I curl around its absence, whining at the loss. He ignores me, unfastening his belt and trousers and pulling out his cock from his briefs. It's dark and thick, so hard that the skin at the top shines and I can make out every ridge of muscles and vein under the thin, velvety skin of it. 

"Suck it," he orders, and I comply eagerly, scrambling down to my knees between his legs and taking the delicious organ into my greedy, wet mouth. 

His answering moan is worth every discomfort that I feel as he gently gags the back of my throat, as he winds his hands through my hair and guides me faster and deeper over him. I'm grateful for the guidance, as I'm still so new to this, and I let Paul's tensing thighs and hitched breaths teach me where he likes my tongue, how deep he likes to linger in my mouth.

"I should keep your as my personal pet," he mutters, viciously to the top of my head. "Keep you under my desk all the time, sucking me all day long. Keep you tied up and bent over my desk so that I can fuck that pretty cunt of yours whenever I get bored doing all this fucking paperwork. What do you think about that, Miss Johnson?"

I make an assenting noise around his shaft, and he grunts his approval. "Enough." 

He pulls me off his cock with a faint popping sound and then rolls on a condom he grabs from a nearby drawer. He spreads his legs, using his thumb to press his erection away from his belly. The message he is sending is very clear.

"Come fix your grade, Miss Johnson," he says huskily, and I crawl up into his lap as quickly as humanly possible, aching for that thick part of him to fill me up and ease the ache that's been there ever since we fell asleep in his bed last night.

"I-I've never..." I trail off as I pause over him, catching his hardened gaze. 

I'm suddenly apprehensive about this, about being on top. Everything else we've ever done, he's taken total control of, he'd guided me and taught me, but if we do it like this....my inexperience will be on fully display.

All of my clumsy attempts will be right there out in the open for him to see and that thought literally terrifies me.

"I kind of like that you've never done this before," he says in a low voice. "But you're a pretty smart girl, aren't you? You'll figure it out."

Determination settles through me. I want to show him what a smart and good girl I really am, even if I look foolish doing it. I lower myself until I feel the wide latex kiss of his tip at my opening, having to squirm and circle to get him worked all the way inside.

"Y-You feel bigger like this," I say as he stretches me out to the max. "Fuck."

"Watch that foul language of yours, Rey," he chides. "I'd hate to have to smack that ass while you bounce up and down on my cock."

Other than holding himself up straight at the base, he makes no move to help me as I pant and shiver my way down his cock, impaling myself inch by thick inch until I'm finally seated against him, so filled up with him that I can barely breathe. My head drops to his shoulder, and he lets me sit there for a moment, quivering and misted with sweat. 

"Let's see you fix that grade of yours, little girl," he murmurs heavily into my ear. "Get you work. Ride me. Ride me until you fucking cum all over my cock."

With my arms wrapped around his neck and my face still hidden in the crevasse of his shoulder, I start to move, moaning loudly as I do. 

I'm stretched so wide, crammed full of him, and every single movement that I make sends agonies of sensation all over me. Good agonies, bad agonies, I don't even know which anymore---just that colossal erection is going to split me open and also that I'm about to come from the pressure of it alone.

It only takes the tiniest of movements---a rocking forward so that my weight grinds the beat of my clit against him---and then I shudder out a deep, soul-shaking climax, clinging to him and crying out my pleasure into his neck.

He holds completely still underneath me, allowing me to quiver my way through and use his hard body however I need, and then he cups my bottom again with his hands as I collapse against his chest, completely and utterly exhausted. 

"That was very nice," he says crisply, as if I've just finished playing a violin solo and not wrung out a delicious orgasm on his perfect cock. "But I'm afraid it's not enough to fix your grade."

"Do you need to cum, Professor?" I ask, sitting up and letting my hands fall to his chest.

Even through the fabric of his button-down shirt, I can feel the tattoo of his heart beating against my palm.

"Yes," he says, and he can use that precisely clipped voice all he wants, because his need is stamped all over his face. It burns inside his eyes and carves itself around the sharp lines of his sculpted mouth. "I need to cum now."

It's both easier and harder to move along him---easier of how wet and slippery I am and harder because the orgasm has made me exquisitely sensitive----and Paul is riveted by my face as I begin to rock against him. His fingertips trace the fleeting furrows in my brow, the little pouts of pleasure and quick smiles I make. 

There's feelings everywhere, everywhere, chasing all over my skin; my nipples are so taut they ache, and my thighs are warm with his hips between them, and even the soles of my feet are tickled by the gentle breeze coming through the open window.

I'm going to come again, and I don't think I'll live through it when I do. Luckily, Paul is close, and with something between a growl and a roar, he surges off his chair with me in his arms and lays me out across his desk.

Papers go everywhere, the inkwell smashes over and spatters us with dark in, and he's so mindless with his lust that he doesn't care. 

I watch a drop of ink trace with his neck onyx-colored blood as he fucks me with a clenched jaw and powerful hips, and that line of ink is all that anchors me to reality as I cum for an explosive final time, too tired and wrung out to do anything other than whimper my way through it, my hands curling weakly around his straining biceps. 

"You make me cum so good," he grunts, his eyes closing as his body goes completely rigid over mine. "Fuck....Rey....oh my _fucking_ GOD!"

He fills the condom with a series of hard, jerking throbs, slumping over my body as he drains inside me. Our hearts pound together, ink and sweat smears between us, and I'm pretty sure everyone from Blakewell to Berlin heard me screaming and grunting, but I don't even care.

I don't ever want to move. I don't ever want to get clean. I don't ever want Paul's body anywhere but right here, inside mine and pressed against mine and dripping ink everywhere.

And I look into his eyes where they peer down at me in their dappled brown eyes, and I can almost imagine he feels the same exact way. I can almost imagine that we're falling in love. 


	12. Chapter 12

PAUL SEVIER

_Ten Days Later...._

"I still don't understand what it is about slippers that you associate with age."

Rey and I are down by the river behind the house, and I'm meant to still be working, but I've given up. I thought by moving us out of the office that I wouldn't be tempted to fuck her, but as it turns out, I want to fuck everywhere, and I very nearly have.

In the past two weeks, I've fucked her uncountable times over my desk, on my study floor, in my bed, in my shower, and on my kitchen table.

I've spanked her until she's been a wet, whimpering mess. I've made her write essays naked at her desk. I've had her service me with her mouth under my desk while I finished taking notes on a Victorian pamphlet about marriage proposals. We've spent nearly ever hour together, working and talking and fucking and sometimes just with her curled in my lap kissing me until we're both breathless and beyond speech.

Every meal, every shower, every mug of passable tea in the last two weeks has happened with her by my side. And I haven't it. In fact, I haven't hated it at all.

Somehow, someway, Rey has made my life sweeter, and a callous, terrible part of me wants to dismiss it as a natural result of all the fucking, but the rest of me knows better. This thing that I have with Rey is remarkably different than whatever I had with Jyn--better and more honest and more real---but there's enough of the same for me to recognize what's happening. 

I care for Rey. Although as I watch her pick her way around the riverbank, looking for stones and ignoring my comment about slippers, I know I can do do better than _I care for her._

Fuck it, I'm falling madly in love with her. And it makes me so angry and terrified and excited, and I'm not sure what to do about it. I'm not sure that _I should_ do anything about it. After all, she's young and vibrant and has an entire life waiting for her at the end of summer.

The last thing she wants is some surly bastard making claims to her life. It stings though, thinking that these days of splashing in the river and wandering up to town after a long day of work are numbered,

Listening to the quiet rustle of her writing on the other side of the room, looking forward to tangling my limbs around hers at night.

But it would be ridiculous to want more than just a summer. In fact, I can't believe I'm even thinking about it. Of course she needs to leave---her life is back in Essex, and my life is back in the States, and my life doesn't include another person, no matter how sexy or warm or open she is.

Never mind how much she looks at me like I matter, like my needs mater, like I'm not a deviant but someone that she adores. She won't adore you for long. Jyn couldn't.

With that depressing reminder lurking about inside my head, I look up to see Rey climbing the riverbank toward me, green blades of grass sticking to her feet. She flops onto the blanket next to my pile of books with a low sigh.

"I won't apologize for the slippers," she says, finally addressing my comment from earlier. "Only old people wear them."

"That's objectively not true, seeing as I wear them."

She wrinkles her nose at me. "But why?"

"The floors get cold sometimes," I say rather defensively. "I have cold floors."

"And then there's the old man pen."

"It has character."

"And the old landscape paintings."

I bristle a little. "Those are tasteful." 

Those soft lips are creased in a teasing smile, and I realize she's poking fun at me. I crawl over her body and pin her down to the blanket. 

"I believe," I whisper against her lips, "that you're being very impertinent at the moment, Miss Johnson."

She wriggles happily underneath me, her hazel eyes glowing with her smug little smile. "And I suppose impediment girls have to be punished, Professor?"

"How right you are," I growl before sealing my mouth over hers in a fierce kiss, licking against her tongue until she moans up into me. But I can't wait and I start shoving up the skirt of her dress right then and there. 

"Do you have a condom?" she asks breathlessly, her hands already at work to shimmy out of her silk panties. My God, we've gone through some fucking panties this week!

I've been obsessive about having one--or three---with me at all times, but I'd genuinely thought I'd be able to control myself this afternoon. "Fuck, sweetheart," I say, giving her a quick kiss. "Give me a second and I'll run inside and get one." 

"Hurry up." She pouts as I get off the blanket, and it's a true test of my strength to leave her like this, with her gleaming hair in a dark halo of light around her head and her bare pussy already wet and waiting for me.

"I will," I vow, and I stride quickly inside. 

When I get to my bedside table, I realize that we've already gone through Rey's condoms and the new package she bought at the store last week. With a heavy sigh, I dig out the old box at the back of my drawer---the one I've had for an embarrassingly long time---and grab a condom, briefly checking the expiry date as I do.

With a sigh of relief that we're still, only just, inside the date, I am downstairs and behind the house as quickly as my legs will carry me.

I fall over Rey like a hungry wolf, eating up her giggles and sighs as if they'll feed me enough through the long winter months. And before long, I'm sheathed and pushing between her legs, relishing the velvet, tight grip of her as I pierce her deep. 

Fuck, she feels so damn good. She always feels so good. She's always so soft and tight, always pure heaven to fuck into. I angle my hips the way I know she likes, pumping into her with languid, slow strokes that drag along her most sensitive spots, and she's a wild thing beneath me, being both a very good and a very bad girl at the same time, as only she can.

I steal another aggressive kiss, wishing that I could steal everything of hers and keep it forever---not just her beauty and her extravagant body but her laugh and intellect and her fearlessness. 

All the things that make her so perfectly Rey are the same exact things that flay me open and make me want to be a better Paul, a man kind and smart and brave enough to deserve her. 

"Paul," she whispers against my lips, and I feel the telltale flutters in her belly and inner thighs and around my cock---she's going to cum. 

I add my thumb to her clit as I brace myself on a forearm over herm but right as she goes over the edge, I feel something I can't recall ever feeling before. It feels like a tiny pop, a tiny pop, and then all of a sudden there's a new feeling of warmth and wetness.

"Oh shit," I gasp, pulling out as fast as I can.

"What?! What is it?" the girl under me says dazedly, still coming down from her climax. "What is it?"

"I think the condom just broke."

That's sufficient information to alarm her, and she props herself up on her arms as I peel off the condom and examine it. "But it's okay, right?" she asks worriedly. "Since you haven't cum yet, right?"

"I think so." I say, still peering into the condom in the afternoon sun. It's definitely broken. "It's probably because it's old...."

And then I have a real chill when I remember that old box was the source of my condom in London. Did that condom break without me even realizing it? I'm nearly lost tp panic that the idea, until something very warm and wet closes over my bare cock, and I look down to see those devilishly soft lips closing around my shaft.

Her tongue is everywhere, flickering and soft beyond all imagination, and she takes me feel like I prefer, deep enough that her throat squeezes the head of my cock.

I groan. And as she fucks me with her mouth, I forget all about old condoms and terrifying possibilities and lose myself to Rey and the warming feeling of coming in the afternoon sun with the river rushing sweetly beside us.

**********

The next day, I propose a work break, and Rey and I go to Haddon Hall for a lunch of sandwiches and a stroll through the medieval manor.

"Why library school?" I ask as we walk through room after room and she chatters at me about all the architectural details and historical oddities tied to them. "It's clear that you love history. And," I say, a little shyly because I'm strangely unused to giving compliments, "you're damned knowledgeable about it, and you're a fucking good researcher too."

She has to hide a beaming smile at my praise, and it does something to my chest. An odd puffing thing. I have the power to do that---I have the power to make her happy.

I want to make her beam all the time; though just as soon as I realize that, I remember I that I can only make her beam until the summer is through. 

"I could never fully decide on just one thing that fascinated me," she says, stepping into the long gallery and then spinning in a slow circle to take it in. "Like this building we're in right now. It's a medieval manor house with a Tudor-style gallery and Victorian monuments in the chapel. I like the idea of my mind being full of layers and chambers and niches and naves, each one filled with different things. As a historian, you have to pick, but as a librarian....you get to have it all."

Her speech is rather charming, even if I feel slightly specious in its reasoning, but it's _her_ I am truly held captive by---the way her eyes glow as she speaks, the way her body animates with enthusiasm. 

"Fine," I concede. "But why here in London? You could go anywhere you'd like--why not somewhere more prestigious?"

If she wants grand libraries, then she deserves the best libraries in the world. She deserves anything. 

"I'll have to show you that there are some very good schools in Essex as well as London sometime," she sniffs. And then after a moment, she adds quietly. "And also because I didn't want to leave my dad."

"Why not?" I live half a world away from my parents, and I still only see them twice a year, and that's more than fine by me. "He's not unwell or anything...is he?"

She rolls her eyes. "He's perfectly fine, health wise. I just think family is important, don't you?" I suppose the time it takes for me to reply is answer enough. She examines me for a long, hard moment before saying, "does this have anything to do with why you're so weird about money?" she asks.

"I'm not _weird_ about money," I protest, but even as I protest, I lower my voice so no one around us can hear. 

She makes a _you're proving my point face,_ and I sigh. 

"Okay, fine, yes, my family has some money." Even that vague admission feels unclean. "And there's no trauma, no division, but the way they are about what they have is very old fashioned. I try to avoid it and I think they try their hardest to avoid me." 

And then I let out a shaky breath. It didn't kill me to say it out loud, and it actually felt nice, a little bit, telling someone else about how unpleasant my family can really be.

"That wasn't so hard, now was it?" she asks, taking my hand and pulling me to a cove of mullioned windows to admire the green expanse outside. "Maybe you just need the right family, you know? One that fits you and only you."

And the strange thing is that I'm looking at her as she says that, as she gazes through the diamond patterns of glass out onto the verdant expanse of grass and rolling green hills, and I'm thinking of _her_ , and _only_ her. I'm thinking of her as my family. It temps me more than I can bear.

But I force myself to remember the ticking clock of summer. Force myself to remember Jyn's cruel words all those years ago. _Degenerate. Deviant._

Even if we didn't have that date in August demarcating our time, how could I expect someone as full of promise and innocence to want to tie herself to a monstrous recluse like? Rey might think these kind of games are fun for a summer, but how could she ever want someone like me for longer than that? Someone has contorted and sexually corrupted as me?

At the end of the day, Rey will be the same as Jyn, and she'll be so sick of me. It's better to prepare myself for that now and plan for a clean break, no matter how much it burns to think of it.

No matter how much it hurts, no matter how much it kills me inside.


	13. Chapter 13

REY JOHNSON

It occurs to me the very next day. I'm at the kitchen table making a shopping list, and then I have to double check the date on my phone. I quickly runs him upstairs and riffle through my things and see that I've only got a handful of travel-worn tampons to call my own, and my period is due to start any now.

I trot back downstairs and add tampons to the list, along with the various foodstuffs, and household supplies that Paul needs. If I didn't stop him, I think he'd probably survive on canned soup alone and tea.

It's a little charming in a bachelor kind-of-way, if it isn't also a little stupefying. The day proceeds as normal---I work, Paul fucks me, I shop for supplies, Paul fucks me again---and it's as if I'm snuggling to sleep in Paul's arms that I wonder how we'll navigate my period. I've never done this before, the whole lover thing, and I'm not even sure what the protocol is.

Do I give him a warning that it's coming soon, or do I just wait until it's arrived and apologize? Will he still be okay fooling around on my period?

And what if he still wants to have sex? Am I comfortable with that? It's an awful lot to digest, and so I'm still thinking it over it as I fall asleep, and again as I wake up to Paul stroking my flanks in a way that lets me know he's thinking about spanking me.

We do a morning spanking and a morning fuck, then it's time for the day to get on, except there's a little niggle of unease at the back of my mind. Still no period yet. 

I shower and go upstairs, and he gets in from his run and showers too, and we work together for most of the day, my sense of unease growing. But I have no earthly idea how to vocalize it to him, no idea how to express my worries, because what if his first thought is of Jyn? 

What if he's so triggered by his bad pregnancy experience with her that he gets extremely angry with me? 

Or worse, what if he thinks I'm the clingy sort-of-girl who's tired to trap him into something by getting herself pregnant? Oh God. Just the thought itself is enough to make me nauseous....except, was I already feeling nauseous? Am I truly nauseous now? No. I'm overreacting, I'm just queasy from nerves and worry, that's all. Nothing whatsoever to do with _that._

Except the next morning when I wake up in Paul's arms, I am definitely nauseous. For real nauseous. I slide free of him and make my way to the bathroom, where I splash my face with cold water and force myself to get un-nauseous. 

Okay, okay, just calm down, Rey. _He said the condom broke that day by the river._ But that was just two days ago. I've done research to know that conception could have only happened two weeks or so ago, and that would have been in London, and I'd bought all of those condoms brand new. But.....

We used one of his condoms in London. Oh God. No. 

"No," I say out loud, just to make extra certain my brain had processed the word. "No, this is not happening."

 _This can't be happening._ I go downstairs in only my thin cotton robe and make my way down the flagged path down to the river. It's still very early in the morning, with only a faint-pink sun and river fog like a shroud over everything, and more than life itself, I want to go crawl back in bed with the handsome, snobby professor that I've come to love. 

Oh _shit. Do_ I love him? Because this is a hell of a time to decide. But even with my lingering nausea and fear, I think I already know the answer to that question and it's yes.

Yes, of course, I love Professor Sevier. His dirty games and his sharp words and his brilliant intellect. His rare flashes of warmth and kindness, his hidden passions and the fire just waiting for the right person to patiently uncover them....yes, I love him. God, I love him.

And I may be pregnant with his child, and somehow I just _know_ he'd never forgive me if that were true, no matter how innocent of it I may be.

No matter how accidental, no matter how not my fault, the one wound he bears is so deeply tied to a baby, and how can I, just a silly little student, ever hope to heal him of it? _First thing's first,_ I order myself.

No sense of worrying about something that might not even be true. I'll quickly get dressed and find a nearby pharmacy and get myself a pregnancy test. And then I can decide what comes next and what it means for my dear professor and me.

I'm to the pharmacy and back to the cottage before Paul is even finished with his run, and I have a plan.

I'll just go to the bathroom---the small water closest by the snug, the one we hardly ever use---and I'll use the tests. Yes, _tests_ plural, because I couldn't decide on a brand, and despite having everything from the best nursing bras to the best infant formulas, _Consumer Reports_ doesn't have a buying guide for pregnancy tests. So I bought three different brands of pregnancy tests, just to be safe.

But when I lock myself inside the bathroom, I'm gripped by a slow, creeping sensation. Like I'm being gradually, gradually frozen in ice, until I'm sitting on the floor across from the sink with my head between my legs just staring down at the tile.

The nausea from the early morning has faded, leaving only a tingling kind of displacement in its place, like my stomach and my heart have traded places. Just go pee on that stick. _Just do it, Rey._

But even standing up right now feels like a herculean feat---like if I stand up, I'm accepting whatever happens next, and I'm not sure I can even do that. 

But as a romantic as it would be to spend the rest of my day sitting on the floor in a state of languishing gloom. I'm not immune to the ticking clock of Paul's run. And my ass is cold from the tile. And my own despair is getting a bit boring---it's not like me to despond over a problem.

It's like me to tackle the problem head-on, with research and enthusiasm and a big Rey Johnson grin, and dammit, that's what I'm going to do now. So I get up and perform the oddly ignoble ritual of peeing on the different sticks and then lining them up according to size and waiting and watching. 

It's so strange to think that my entire future is concentrated in these little plastic rectangles full of urine and chemical dyes. Strange to think that whatever these rectangles reveal in the next minute or two is going to completely redirect the course of my life for better or for worse, and oh my God, they're finally starting to turn colors, they're finally starting to stripe over with weak washes of blue---

I sit back down on the floor, except this time I don't stare down at the tile, I stare at my hands, as if I expect them to be different. As if I expect my entire body to be different. Nothing's different.

But everything is. Everything has to be. Why? Because I'm pregnant, and I'm pregnant with a baby I know Paul will not want. 

*********

I set a timer on my phone and give myself five minutes. Five whole minutes to freak the-hell0-out--to scream or to cry or whatever comes first. Whatever I need to do---and then when the timer beeps, I wipe away my tears, sweep the tests with their condemning plus signs into the trash bin, and go find my laptop to make a plan.

Paul comes into the study with shower-damp hair and rolled-up sleeves that show off the strong lines of his forearms and wrists. 

He's scrubbing at the wet hair with his fingertips and frowning in that way the tells me he's already several layers deep in some new insight of his, but he stops when he sees me at my desk and smiles. God, that smile of his. 

It's so wide, with lines bracketing those sculpted lips, and its changes his entire face from scornfully distant to sincere and boyish in an instant.

"Well, good morning, Miss Johnson," he says, and I slam my laptop shut so that he won't see all the incriminating tabs that I have open, and I smile back at him, hoping that he won't see how forced it is.

"Good morning, Professor." I say, and then he bends in to kiss my neck. 

He didn't shave completely this morning, and his stubble leaves the most delicious burn wherever his soft lips touch me. It's the best kind of sting, and for a minute I let everything else fade away--the unexpected pregnancy, the panic I'm feeling, the entire plan---and just melt into the feeling of him. My professor. My Paul. 

He withdraws too soon, dropping a kiss on my head before he goes back over to his desk. "You've nearly finished with all the books, I see."

"Well, I still have a lot of the newer ones to do," I say automatically, and then I stop myself because I don't know that I'll ever get to the newer books. 

I don't know that I'll be able to get to anything at all, because I don't know what's going to happen after I tell Paul that I'm pregnant with _his_ child. _Unless, you don't tell him at all....._

The idea is beyond tempting. It snakes around my thoughts and my heart until I feel tied up with it.

"Whenever you have time," Paul says, not even noticing my inner struggle. "I'm already astounded at what you've been able to accomplish in just a couple of short weeks."

Despite everything, I allow my gaze to follow his around the study. and I don't even bother to tamp down the bubble of pride that I feel at the progress I've made. Instead of an unsteady maze made of piles of books and paper, I've got the study organized with new shelves and cabinets of glass-topped drawers for the rarer books.

Aside from the books stacked away under my desk still awaiting cataloging, the floor in the study is now completely clear--save for the cat bed I bought on a whim for Silencer---and a person can actually walk around the room without tripping onto centuries-old manuscripts now. 

I have done a good job here, and I'll be able to take that with me no matter what. I look over to the unbearably handsome man already bent over his work, and I can't help think that's possibly all I'll get to take home with me: the memory of well-shelved books and nothing else. The thought punches though my chest with grief, and I have to turn away, lest I risk Paul seeing all these wild emotions across my face.

No, it's best that I approach him as controlled and composed as possible. I need to be cold like him. 

By the end of the afternoon, I've done all the surreptitious research that I can. I've made spreadsheet of options, along with their qualitative pros and their quantitative cons. I've found a ride-home to Essex, and him a flight back to the United States where he belongs and I've begun preparing a small speech to Paul, with a few salient bullet points. 

Namely, that is is not my fault---if it's anyone's fault here, it's _his,_ for using old-ass condoms---and also, second bullet point, I'm keeping the baby. I've made the _spreadsheet_ and I've made a decision, and a spreadsheet decision is a permanent one. 

Maybe it's insane---maybe I'm insane---but when I sat there looking at all the different paths I could take, my hand kept drifting down to my belly and my mind kept drifting to this fantasy of a baby with Paul's chocolate-brown eyes. Maybe....just maybe he won't be angry at me? Maybe he won't be terrified?

Maybe he's healed enough from what happened with Jyn that he can imagine a little squishy baby with his eyes and my dimples and all will be well? 

_But what if he doesn't? What if he can't?_ What if I tell him and confess to loving him, and he rejects both me and the baby in one fell swoop? What then? _Then you make him take the flight back home, make him see this can't work, and then you get started on your baby to-do list._

I curl over my desk, bracing my head against my hands, and try not to cry. I don't want to be rejected. I don't want to lose Paul. 

And yet, even without the baby, I don't know that he'd still want me. He hasn't even mentioned anything about us, about this being anything more than a convenient, kinky fling to while away the summer. 

I want more than anything to be reasonable, to be logical, but maybe it's the pregnancy hormones or maybe it's the fact that Paul stirs me up beyond all reckoning, but suddenly, the tears are right there, ready to fall. Am I really so unlovable? So unlikeable? 

That even something longer than a summer with me is a detestable thought? 

"Rey." A low voice comes from behind me, and I automatically freeze as Paul's warm hands slide over my shoulders. "Are you okay?"

In my distress, I completely forgot that he could see and hear me. I hoped he was too absorbed in his work to even notice my breakdown, but it appears that I was wrong. Like, I've been wrong about so much else. 

"I'm fine, really," I say, pressing the heels of my palms against my eyes and swallowing back my emotions. I move my hands and look up at him, giving my brightest smile. "Just tired."

He immediately frowns. "I've been working you too hard."

"No, not at all," I say, grateful that no tears have actually spilled and now only wishing the tremble in my chin would settle. "Really, I'm fine. I probably just need a nap."

And before I can protest---or indeed, even begin to process what's happening---Paul's scooping me up in his arms and carrying me upstairs. 

"Paul!" I say, tugging pointlessly at the shirt fabric near his neck and kicking my legs wildly. "Put me down! Now!"

"No. You're having a nap," he says firmly, carrying me into his bedroom and laying me down on the bed. 

He hands over me, as if torn. Then he climbs onto the bed as well, not to cradle me in his arms but going lower, lower, until his wide shoulders are tucked between my legs. 

"This---this isn't a nap," I say breathlessly as he pushes my skirt up to my waist and tugs my panties to the side. 

"I'm tucking you in," he says, a ingle eyebrow arching in mischief. "Making sure you can fall asleep easily."

And I could cry as his mouth descends warm and wet on my intimate flesh, not because I was neat to tears before but because I love him so much, because he's made me fall hopelessly in love with him, because I can hardly stand these rare glimpses his open, happy soul and I'm terrified I'll have to leave them behind with everything else.

I'm terrified of sending him back into his emotionless, cruel shell once I tell him the truth. My mischievous, smiling professor will be gone, and all that will be left is a bitter husk in his place.

 _You can't know that_ , I assure myself, although the assurance feels very hollow. There's every chance I'll tell Paul and things will go well. There's every chance this has a happy ending for us. 

But I can't stop the tide of doubt that seeps in along with the tide of pleasure, and as his mouth gently works me toward climax, I find myself clinging on to ever single sensation, every single slice of memory. 

His soft hair under my fingers and hot mouth and teasing hands pressing and massaging and stroking all of my most sensitive places, and then finally---sweetest of all---the tender expression on his face as I come undone, pleasure spiraling out from my belly in whorls of ecstasy. I arch and writhe under him, my toes digging at the blankets, my head rolling back, and when I slowly circle back to earth, I see him standing up and getting ready to pull the blankets over me---as if he really means to tuck me in.

"Wait! What about you?" I ask, reaching for him.

He pauses, obviously torn. "I don't need---shit, Rey. Holy shit!"

My hands have found him under his trousers, and I'm giving him a teasing squeeze. He's as hard as a spike. 

"I'll just take a minute," I promise, and he growls already mounting the bed and unfastening his pants.

"The fucking hell you will," he says darkly, and then my lips are being parted by the plump, swollen head of his cock as he feeds my mouth. "Fuck," he hisses as I instinctively suck around him. "Yes, girl, just like that, fucking just like that."

And after I've sucked him to his satisfaction, he pulls himself from my mouth and straddles my stomach, yanking down my dress and my bra to expose my tits. I love seeing him like this, feral and quaking with unfiltered lust, and there's something so primal about seeing a man normally as refined as Paul do something as crude as mark me with his cum.

But that's exactly what he does, his one hand braced on the headboard above me, and the other hand fucking his cock as if he'll die if he doesn't empty himself immediately.

I watch the dusky head disappear and reappear in the ferocious circle of his grip, and then I moan in fascinated lust as his orgasm leaves him in thick, white ropes all over my bare tits. It's so fucking erotic that I've nearly forgotten about everything else that's come before, and I beg him to rub me again, to fix the new empty ache he's made inside me, and by the time we cum again and clean up, we're both ready for a nap.

 _Tomorrow_ , I think drowsily as I fall asleep. _I'll tell him first thing tomorrow._


	14. Chapter 14

PAUL SEVIER

Rey's been acting strange. I first noticed it yesterday before I whisked her up to my bed, and now I'm seeing it again today as we start our work for the morning. And I think I know what it's about, which means I'm currently sitting at my desk ruminating not over a photographic illustration of the courtship process, as I should be doing, but over what I should do next.

I mean, it's obvious what I should do next. I should talk to her. But I'm a gelded coward, because even the mere thought of saying what I need to say out loud has me retreating.

As small sigh sifts over me from Rey's desk, and I look up to see her running the top of her pen along her mouth, along the seam of those sinful lips. She's got one hand spread low on her belly, and her eyes are distant.

She's beautiful. Beautiful and smart, and she's pried open locks inside me that I thought were sealed shut for eternity. What am I doing with her? Why can't I be as brave and reckless as she can, and why can't I just admit how I feel?

Admit that I want her and love her and need her for longer than the summer? Because that's what she needs, isn't it? That's what this new distance of hers is about? She's finally realized that I've given her nothing more than substantial with my cock and the palm of my hand, and even though we promised nothing more between each other, it's catching up with her. She's adjusting her feelings and expectations, and....and I don't want her to.

I don't want another morning like the one in London when I woke up all alone. I don't want there to be any reason she thinks she has to leave me for good. I want her to know how I feel....how I truly feel. 

"Rey," I say softly. "Come here."

I've summoned her over to my desk countless times since she's arrived in my home, but this is the first time _I_ feel nervous as she approaches me, the first time that I've known her, I have absolutely no idea what happens next.

But despite that, my cock hardens as she walks toward me in her little tweed skirt and schoolgirl-ish blouse--exactly the kind of outfit that tempts me to distraction.

I'm going to fuck her after we talk, I decide, to reward her for being so perfect. She's ready to kneel or bend over my desk, and her eyes flared with pleased surprise as I pull her down into my lap. 

"Miss Johnson," I murmur, brushing some of that coffee-dark hair away from her soft face.

"Professor," he says, the word as always staining her cheeks with an adorable pink. 

I kiss those cheeks now, and her plush mouth, sliding my tongue against her lips until she opens for me and I can kiss her the way that I really want. Deep and devouring. Claiming and hungry. 

"Rey, I love you," I say against her mouth, and the words leave me like my own breath, like water from a spring. 

As natural anything, as easy as being alive. And at the sound of them in the gentle summer air of the office, I feel a surge of happiness so real that I can't even believe that I've waited so long to say them. I should have told her the minute I realized. I should have told her and then told her nothing else for the rest of my life.

Except while I'm smiling against her lips, I realize that Rey's gone completely rigid in my arms, and when I pull back with a concerned gaze to look at her, I see nothing but pure panic on her face.

Dread quickly send my stomach plummeting to my feet, and suddenly a horrible thought wedges its way into my mind. What if she doesn't love me?

What if he doesn't care for me at all? What if---oh God---all the sighs and the distant looks have been because she wants to be free of me? What if she wants to be free of my deviance? My perversions? 

My _kink,_ as she so innocently calls it? It's Jyn all over again, except it's worse, a thousand times worse, because I've realized that I didn't love Jyn like I love Rey. Not even close, not even a little bit.

If Rey doesn't love me, I'm not sure if I'll survive it. But before I can complete my own terror spiral, I see that Rey's hazel eyes are brimming with tears, and I quickly reach up to brush them away. She catches my hand with my fingertips on her cheek, nuzzling against my palm like a distressed kitten, and it breaks my heart to see her upset. _What's wrong, baby, talk to me, please?!_

And it breaks my heart again to think that she might be upset because she's going to refuse me. Because I confessed to loving her and now she's trying to find the words to tell me that she doesn't love me back. 

"Rey," I say in a choked voice. "Listen to me, you don't have to---I mean, I should've have---please don't cry---"

She pressed her own fingers to my lips now, meeting my eyes with the shining green and gold of her own. "I love you too, Paul," she whispers, but she doesn't sound happy. 

She sounds anything but happy, and her words are like twin swords of joy and pain right to my heart. Doesn't she feel it too? How good and right we are together? Doesn't she understand how huge this is for me, how fucking rare and prefect we could be as one?

"Then why are you crying for?" I ask, searching her face for answers. "I don't understand."

She just shakes her head, crying even harder now, and she curls into the tiniest possible ball in my arms, until she's completely nestled into me and the scent of her hair fills my nose. Her legs are pulled up to her chest, which hikes up her skirt past her ass, and even though my mind is mostly on soothing her, my body reacts to the rounded flesh now sitting bare on my leg. 

And then her lips are on my neck, open and imploring, working their way up to my jaw and my earlobe, her tear-wet face slicking against mine, but I don't try to deny her.

I can't deny her anything, I think, least of all the comfort I'm the most qualified to give. I meet her mouth with an ardent kiss, tugging her against me so that she has no choice but to straddle me, so her hard nipples press through her shirt and drag up against my chest, so I can cup her backside in my hands and grind her against my cock for the friction that we both are craving. 

Her tongue, when I find it, is eager and needy, chasing mine with a desperation that's underscored by her hands flying everywhere---at my shit buttons, at the bunched muscles of my arms, at the tensed lines of my neck. 

"Oh, Paul," she mumbles. "Please, please, please."

"Anything you want, darling," I say, the endearment slipping out of me faster than I can catch it back.

But why would I want to catch it back? I love her. She deserves for me to be more than just a tight-lipped miser about it. 

She's already fumbling with my pants, her small, slender fingers on my cock, and before I can even register how good it feels to have her stroking the hot, thin skin, she'd wedging me at her most private place and pushing herself down in wild, frantic thrusts. 

It's messy and rough, her skirt bunched up around her waist and tears still dripping from her face, but her eyes are completely open and raw on mine and something between us tightens closer than ever, like a knot cinched shut. I know I should stop her. I should do the right thing and wipe her teas away.

But how can I when the first edge of a smile pulls at her lips and she's chanting. "Yes, Paul, oh God, yes"?

When she feels like pure fucking ecstasy on my cock, wet and slick and soft, like a tight heaven? It's never felt this good, _ever._ It's never been me clenching every muscle in my belly and ass and thighs so I don't blow too early. It's never been---

I've never been bare with her before. _Holy shit._ Holy shit, I'm raw and naked inside her. I'm naked inside her, and it feels better than anything I've ever felt in my entire life. 

If if cum like this, I don't even know how I'll survive, because I'm barely holding on as it is, and.....

But I can't cum like this. _I can't._ I've fucked that up once before, and I refuse to fuck it up with Rey too. My bold little librarian with her entire life ahead of her; she's far too precious for me to make this mistake a second time around. 

My hand finds her hips, and I try to still the frenzied roll of her body over mine. "Let me go and get a condom," I say to her. "This isn't safe."

She then peers down at me, and for a moment, I treasure just how beautiful she is like this, even with tear tracks shining on her face. Her hair is like the silkiest, sweetest curtain around us, her cheeks are flushed and pink, and her mouth is a study in feminine glory. 

"Paul," she says. Just that. Just my name, and there's an undercurrent of pain in it, it's the last time she'll ever say it like this, which is ridiculous of course.

If I have my way, my say, she can say it every single day for the rest of her life. 

I try to ease her off me. "Let me get prepared, Rey. It will only take a second, and then you can ride me as long as you want to."

She doesn't move yet, her lower tip trembling a little. "It feels so good," she says. "I didn't know it would feel different for me, too, but it feels so damn bloody good."

I give a taut, rough laugh. "Yes, it feels good. Too good, and if we don't fix it soon, I'm going to be cumming inside of you."

Her lower lip trembles even more. "What if it didn't matter, Paul?"

I stare up at her, my mind spinning even as my cock flexes in happiness at the thought. "But it doesn't matter," I point out. 

My chest tightens in an irritated confusion, because how can she even joke about it not mattering? With her future? With my past? 

She closes her eyes. "It doesn't have to. Not now."

"Because we've said I love you to each other?" There's a spiked cynicism to my tone that I don't like, but I can't help it. "I've said those words before, Rey. They have nothing to do with what will happen if I cum inside you." 

Her eyes flutter open, and suddenly I know I've said something wrong, something deeply wrong. "Right," she says fainting. "Of course."

She tries to climb off my lap, but despite it being what I wanted, it feels wrong now, like if I let her unjoin us, something else, something more crucial, will come unjoined as well. I hold her tight to me, catching her eye.

"Rey?"

"No, no it's fine," she says, still trying to move off me, and I have a flash where I realize I'm forcing her to stay on my lap. 

I let go of her as if I've been burned, horrified at the thought of forcing a woman, but I'm just as horrified at the look on her face when she gets to her feet in front of me. She looks like I've just slapped her in the face, and I don't know if it's because I let her go or because of what I've just said.

She pulls down her skirt, and I have the distinct impression that she's trying to make herself look more dignified, more adult, as if that matter when my cock is still naked and wet between us.

"Do you really mean that? What you said about love having nothing to do with fucking bare?"

She's twisted my words, but as much as I work with words for a living, I can't figure out how. It's in the tone, in her giant hazel eyes so wounded and the way she wraps her arms around herself, as if to shield her body away from me.

"I just meant," I say slowly, "that just because I said that I loved you doesn't give me permission to be reckless with you. In fact, _because_ I do...I love you, I don't want to be reckless and careless. Not with your future." 

Something softens in her face, and her lip quivers again. "What if my future's already been changed?" she asks.

"You don't understand what I mean, sweetheart. I mean---"

"I'm pregnant, Paul," she blurts out. "I just found out yesterday. I'm pregnant with your child."

*********

There's a kind of static buzzing in my ears, like the air itself has come to life to hiss the truth at me, but it doesn't matter because I find myself groping clumsily for both thoughts and words. _It doesn't make any sense_ is the first real thought that surfaces, coupled with, but I was ever-so-careful.

So careful to use protection every single time, so careful to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past. So careful not to ever put myself in that hideous situation ever again.

_I hope it isn't yours. Pervert._

My silence over her confession of being pregnant with my child doesn't go unnoticed by Rey, and her face and voice are just on the edge of crumpling she finally says, "It must have happened in London. I'm not on birth control, and if your condom broke...."

Didn't I think it was all too wet that night when I went to take it off? But who could blame me for not thinking about it when I was still reeling with the fact that _she'd been a virgin?_

Yes, the condom was old, but it wasn't so old that I thought twice as I rolled it on, and holy fuck, what were the damn odds? That the night she lost her virginity to me was also the night she got pregnant? And it's that more than anything that makes the blood drain my face, that makes my body cool and grow rigid with self-loathing.

I'm not better than the pervert Jyn thought that I was, impregnating some innocent like a fucking caveman, no matter how accidental it was.

I pull my pants closed, fumbling for an apology, for anything to convey the sheer fucking horror I feel about what I've done to her, but I'm coming up with nothing, and it's only as I look up at her again that I realize the damage my lack of response has caused her.

My silence has cost me something important, although I'm not yet sure what it is. Because the trembling lip is now gone. The tears have dried up. In their place is an expression of blazing determination---not unlike her face the night we first met, but there's something heartbreakingly grim in her look now, like she's resigned herself to a future so cold that it's already making her numb.

I sit up, about to say something, anything, just to forestall whatever is about to come out of her mouth, but she speaks first. 

"I've already made the arrangements for the both of us, you are clearly unhappy here, so I've talked to some higher up people at your place of work and they've agreed to let you return to the States whenever you feel ready, and I've arranged for me to return to Essex," she says clearly, "so I don't want you to worry about me lingering here when I'm unwanted."

Unwanted? But her reasoning slips by me as I face the reality of what she just said. She's leaving me. Not only is she leaving me, but she's already made the plans, which means that she's been thinking about leaving me for....shit, maybe ever since she found out.

Maybe since the moment she realized that she was pregnant. The very thought chills me down to my core. _Just like Jyn_. She can't stand the idea of carrying me child. 

"....a spreadsheet," Rey is saying, still standing in front of me like she's delivering the bleakest presentation of all time. "And just so you know, I'm keeping the pregnancy. I've thought about it within both rational and emotional parameters, and it's the decision that I feel the happiest with. I know, obviously, you aren't happy and that you won't want anything to do with me or the child, and I promise you here and now that I won't bother you for anything---"

"You don't a fucking thing," I say, and the cold words cut through her presentation like a jagged sword. 

It's the first thing I've said since she's revealed all of this to me, and I'm vaguely aware that my first words should have been kinder, more understanding---but how can she just stand there and announce that she's leaving it like it means nothing? Like it's not going to kill me? Like I don't love her?

And how can she think I wouldn't care that she'd be taking my baby with her? 

"I know enough," she says, lifting her chin in that brash assertiveness that I love and that also drives me fucking crazy. "I know that you don't want this. I know you don't want us."

 _Us_. She doesn't mean me and her. She means her and the baby. _My_ baby. My blood pounds hot again, for reasons I don't entirely understand. Anger, hurt, confusion---all of those---but there's something else, something dangerous. Possession.

"You have no fucking idea what I want," I say, getting to my feet. She takes a step back and then another as I step forward. "You weren't even going to talk to me about this? Before you just up and left me?"

Her heel hits the wall behind her and she's trapped, but she refused to cower. "Listen, I won't ask you for anything that you're not willing to give," she says proudly. "I swear that I didn't do this to trap you. I didn't do any of this to hurt you."

I know. It's what I should say, what I should tell her, but I'm still thrumming with this need, with this fear, that she's leaving me and I can't hold on to her, and all I want to do is hold on to her. Her and this baby. 

"We can both end this healthily, like condescending adults," she says as my arms go to her waist, effectively pinning her against the wall, and her body ripples with response---goose bumps, hard nipples, lips parted. 

"No," I say.

"It ended the night we met," she continues but more weakly this time around.

"No," I say again, my hands dropping to her pert bottom and lifting her up against me. 

Her legs go to my waist automatically, and she can't help the way she rubs herself against my renewed erection, just as I can't help the way I rub against her still wet and swollen pussy.

"Paul," she tries, but my mouth is already on hers, kissing her as if I can brand my soul onto her soul, as if I can force her to stay with the heat of my lips alone. 

"Red means stop," I say, and when I meet her eyes, I know the word will never leave her lips.

And when I reach beneath us to aim my cock at her opening, I'm rewarded with a deep moan. This time, as I thrust into her completely naked, I savor every fucking second of it. Every tight, wet second, every inch of nothing between us.

"You were going to leave me," I grunt, pumping into her. "You were going to leave." 

"It's for the best, Paul," she gasps, her arms wrapping as tight around my neck as her legs are around my waist. 

I don't answer her with words, letting my mouth's actions speak for me instead, blazing hot nips and kisses down her jaw and to her neck, where I keep my face buried as I fuck her. She's so impossibly soft like this, pinned hard against a wall, not just her soft cunt but her breasts pillowing against my chest, her round bottom in my hands, and her velvet thighs around my hips.

The orgasm is like a fist at the base of my spine, angry and hot, and I can feel its claws everywhere in my body, tightening in my belly and drawing up my balls and clenching the breath in my chest---but she has to go first, dammit,

She's got to cum first. I drop her weight just enough so that the friction catches against her clit. I feel it the moment it takes hold of her---the straining, squirming tension of her building climax---and I work it desperately, fan it into flames until she's falling into the fire of her own pleasure, fluttering over the edge into release.

"Professor," she gasps, and I freeze, but she doesn't notice.

She's still riding out the waves of her own orgasm on my cock, and then it doesn't matter how much the word affects me. There's no way any man can hold back now, and I am no exception.

With this curvy, dark-haired goddess wet and whimpering and impaled on me, I cum like a rubber band snapping, sharp and sudden and nearly painful, grunting into it like a beast. Spurt after spurt of heat erupts into her, and it's like I can feel it everywhere, from my scalp to my toes, and I never want it to end---the feeling of pouring into her, the feeling of her still cumming around me and on me and against me.

And she is so perfect. So perfect. She deserves better than a twisted man like me. The world slowly unwinds, slowly brings us back to normal again.

Normal breath, normal pulse, normal heartbeat---although my heart is still slamming wildly against my chest because I realized that I haven't just fucked Rey the innocent little temptress. I've just fucked---like really fucked the mother of my child.

And the responsibility of that us uncomfortably acute. I carefully set her down and tilt her chin up to meet my face.

"How are you?" I ask, abruptly worried that I fucked her too rough, that I was too much and that I've hurt her. 

"I'm good," she says, a bit dazed, and then she offers me the first real smile that I've seen all day. "Professor."

I flinch, just as I did when she said it to me a moment ago. And what's worse is the fact that I hate that this is the second time that I've seen her catch me in the act.

"What?" she asks, her forehead creasing. "What is it?"

"You can't call me that. Not---not anymore."

She keeps her eyes on me as she covers herself. "Why not?"

I hate that I'm not as brave as her, not as strong. I look away, using the fastening of my pants and shirt buttons as an excuse not to meet her eyes. "We can't play that game now with each other."

"But I like that game." Her voice is so honest, so clear, and how does she do that? How can she make it all seem so easy? So simple? "Not just like it, Paul, but I think I have to play it too. I need it."

"We can't do it, Rey." I repeat, sitting back down at the desk and reaching for a piece of paper. 

My mind is whirling, spinning, circling faster than I can keep up, as if fucking Rey has done the complete opposite of settling me, it's wound me up. 

"That was all before, don't you see? Everything has to change now."

She goes completely still at these words. "What do you mean everything has to change now? I don't understand."

"I mean, you're pregnant. I can't do the dirty professor routine with you, and we certainly can't keep living like this," I gesture around us to the cottage, with it's gentle river noises and nearly ordered bookshelves and sleeping cat. "I have to find a different job---a suitable one for being a father, which isn't whatever the hell I'm doing now---and we need to figure out prenatal care, first and foremost, for you, along with my visa. Ah, I have an idea," I say, my thoughts finally catching up to me. "We'll get married. I think if we plan it right we can get it done as fast as next week. That will solve a few problems fairly easily."

I'm already scribbling a list of things to do, things that need to be done to keep Rey with me, and it takes me a moment to notice that she's put her hand over the top of my paper. I glance up at her, confused.

"You want to get married?" she asks, her voice layered with something that I don't completely understand.

"I really don't a choice. I have a duty now--- _we_ have a duty now. To honor the situation." 

"You do know this isn't the Victorian ages, right," she says tightly. "We have a lot more choices that we know what to do with."

But she doesn't get it? I don't want any other choices, I don't want any choice that separates me from her or from the baby. I want her. I love her and I want her, and I can't let this end in heartbreak. I won't. 

"We'll get married, and I'll stop writing and go back to teaching." I say, looking back down at the paper adding a few more lines on the growing list of things to do.

"Okay," she says faintly, and when I finally look up later, she's left the office.

Silencer hops up on the desk and yowls at me, but I ignore her, just as I ignore the burning feeling in my chest telling me to go and find Rey and hold her and tell her that I love her again. There will be time for all of that later.

But first, I have a duty to her and this baby, and I won't fail and I won't stop. She'll understand. 


	15. Chapter 15

REY JOHNSON

I have to set another freak-out timer on my phone. I give myself ten minutes this time around, and I lie facedown on my bed, letting the shocked tears leak slowly out of my eyes. Did I think the worst thing that could happen was Paul rejecting me? Did I dread him turning away in cool anger, ordering me to leave?

I've been a stupid, innocent fool, because there was has always been a possibility that is much, much worse, and that is Paul treating me like some kind of obligation. Like some kind of responsibility he has to shoulder.

I have a duty now. To honor the situation. Oh God. Cold rejection is so much less awful than cold acceptance. Cold duty. 

Talking about marrying me like it's some sort of chore, some kind of heavy burden that has to be carried out to the finish line, no matter what. Feeling like a burden and a chore---why is that so familiar? Oh right, because it's why no one's ever wanted me before. No one's ever wanted me to date and not even to fuck, and it's probably because they could smell the too _muchness_ on me. 

Because they could sense I'd become a duty if given half the chance. When Paul said that he loved me and then fucked me with fierce, unraveling passion against the wall, I thought---well, I didn't think, actually. I hoped.

I hoped with all my fears and worries were misplaced and that somehow and some way, this would have a happily ever after for us. Him, me and the baby. 

But I refuse to be his cold duty. I refuse to sit around waiting for the day when his resignation becomes quiet resentment, because it will. Maybe he'll be able to keep it hidden. Maybe he'll even fool himself into accepting this new, structured life, but eventually he'll hate me for the things he's certain that he has to do now.

Giving up his kink. His research. His freedom. He'd hate going back to teaching and giving up on his book, and he'd hate himself for every time he wanted to get kinky with me but would feel like he couldn't. 

And he'd hate me for marrying him and invading his quiet bubble of a life. I don't know why he thinks he has to give all that up just because I'm pregnant, but I know him well enough to tell he won't be moved. Which only means one thing. It's up to me.

By the time my timer goes off, I've dried my tears and started packing my belongings. And by the time Paul notices that I'm missing, it will be far too late. 

_Two Days Later....._

My father's voice is echoing off the kitchen tile in a dry rumble to put me to sleep every single night as he read to me when I was a child. The familiar sound of it makes me want to cry, but I can't tell if that's lingering jet-lag or the baby hormones. 

"Yes, she's here," I hear him say, and then there's a long pause. "She's sleeping now. But I can tell her you've called. Again."

I bury my face into my pillow, wishing that my bedroom weren't just right up the stairs from the kitchen. Wishing that I didn't have to hear the phone ring over and over again with Paul trying to talk to me. 

In a flash of masochism, I lift up my own phone to peek at the screen. Tens, if not hundreds, of notifications, emails, texts, phone calls, everything---all from Paul. All from my terrifyingly sexy professor. It was awful sneaking out of the cottage--more than awful. I thought I was dying as I climbed into the cab waiting outside, as Silencer sat perched on the stone bench inside the front garden and tiled her little cat head at me.

I hated leaving. I hated walking away from the cottage, with its blown flowers and leafy vines and old stone walls. I hated hearing the river nearby, shallow and bright, knowing that I'd never hear it again.

And I even hated poor little Silencer for making me love her when she should have known better. I hated leaving Paul.

I hated knowing that his polished voice and mysterious eyes wouldn't be mine to hear and to see any longer. I hated how hard it was to sneak away because I also hated how impossible it would be for me to say goodbye to someone that I loved.

I would try to leave, and he'd be too handsome, too smart, too magnetic, and I'd stay anyway, even though my staying would wreck his life and ultimately make him loathe me for the part I played in wrecking it.

No, this was the way it was going to be. And I hated that part most of all. It only took Paul an hour or so to realize that I was gone, but an hour was all I needed.

I was most of the way to Essex by then, and I made my way my small town and then my father's two-story flat before he could reach me. Then, like with all the calls and emails today, he was acting out of duty, and I bet even now the relief is starting to creep in. 

The relief that I won't be ruining his his life after all. I don't read the emails or the texts. I don't let myself. 

Because as much as I want Paul to be feeling relief right now, as much as I want to think I've found a way to walk out of his life with my head held high, I feel absolutely nothing but pure agony. Maybe there's a tiny part of me that hopes he'll come after me. That he'll come chasing after me and take me into his arms and everything that is sure to keep us apart will find a way and we'll be okay. 

It's both ridiculous and childish---sheer nonsense given what I've done and how I've refused to talk to him---but maybe I'm too Rey Johnson _not_ to be ridiculous and childish sometimes.

Yet another reason Paul and I would never have worked out. My father appears in my doorway, holding out a mug of tea for me, which I take even though I won't drink it.

I haven't told him about the pregnancy yet---or even that Paul and I were briefly a thing or the fact that he's even the father---although I think he's pieced that together from my unexpected arrival home and Paul's many phone calls.

"Do you want me to take you to your apartment?" Dad asks softly. "At least to get some fresh clothes?"

I look down at my flannel unicorn pj's--a relic from my secondary years that I found in my old dresser. "I guess I should. But....can I stay here for a few more days?"

He softens, trundling over and sitting down on the edge of my bed. "You know that I'm always happy to have you here, Rey. No matter what's going on."

He takes my hand, and I try not to cry in earnest. My dad has always been like this--loyal and quiet and easy-going. God, how I wish I'd been born the same! Instead of messy and loud and _too much._

"Dad? Were you ever scared about having me?"

He looks down at my face, and understanding rearranges the smile on his face into something both kinder and sadder. He knows. Maybe it's my question or his fatherly intuition, but it's plain and he's just figured it out, and he squeezes my hand. 

"When I found out that your mother was pregnant, I felt nothing but pure excitement, because I knew I could do anything with that amazing woman at my side. But when she died...."His eyes grow glossy, and I know he's seeing memories I'm too young to remember. Memories of hospital beds and doctor visits. "I was more than scared. I was paralyzed. Because I didn't think I could do it without her. You were only six then and still so young, and every good part of you was because of her. What if I ruined somehow? What if I stilled all the parts of you that had only flowered because of your mother?"

He's never told me any of this before, and I sit up a little, curious. "What do you mean, because of her?"

Dad smiles fondly. "I've told you how smart and driven she was, but have I ever told how funny and friendly she was? How utterly determined? How brave? She could march into a room full of complete strangers and have them all loving her within minutes. She could travel to a different country she'd never even been to, and within a day, she was already learning the language and having her own set of adventures. She was the total opposite of me and perfect in every single way. And when I saw how like her you were....I wanted to treasure that all costs. I still do." 

I give him a hug, overcome, swelling with pain and pride. "I never knew that, Dad," I whisper, my eyes leaking tears onto his shoulder.

"I know I should have told you sooner. But it's hard to talk about that for me, and for you....for you, I only wanted you to look forward to your future. Not to be stuck with me in a painful past."

"But what do I do now?" I ask tearfully. "What comes next?"

"That, my brave girl, only you can answer. But I will say that I believe that fear is part of the process. It's what makes the joy all the more precious in the end."

"That's very wise of you to say," I say, sniffling as I pull back. 

"Go easy on Paul," Dad says gently. "Men like us sometimes need longer to become as brave as you and your mom were. He'll find his way." 

I shake my head. "He was willing to do so much for me, but it felt all wrong. It felt like the was forcing himself, and I decided at the beginning of the summer that I wouldn't be that girl. That clingy girl who grabbed on to any promise of a future, no matter how emotionally coerced it was." 

"So noble," Dad says. "But did you ever consider it's the other way around? That he's trying to cling on to you and just doesn't know how?"

I frown. "It didn't feel like that."

"He's lost someone before, and it sounds to me like the first thing he wanted to do was to make sure of was that he didn't lose you too. Think about it, darling," And with that, Dad drops a kiss on my forehead and leaves me to my thoughts.

Could be right? Was Paul trying to hold on to me, as opposed to grimly shouldering me like some kind of burden? Did he.... _want_ me? And the baby?

And if he did, would he ever forgive me for running away? For running out on him?


	16. Chapter 16

PAUL SEVIER

I thought I already I lived through the worse day of my life. I thought what happened with Jyn was the worst thing. I wouldn't ever go through, but as I walk through the house calling Rey's name and realizing with cold, encroaching horror that she is gone. 

I know I was wrong. _This_ is the worst day of my life. _This_ is really what it is to having my heart broken. Shattered like glass. 

And the shitty thing? I absolutely know why. I know I deserve it. I walk back into the study where I had her pinned to the wall not an hour before, where I held her curled and crying in my lap. God, what a fuckup, I am. I should have held her until night fell. I should have dropped down to my knees and worshiped her.

I should have cradled her and murmured how happy I was, how much I loved her, how I would take care of her as long as she'd let me. I should have been honest with her. I should have just opened my mouth and _talked._

But my God, how could she have expected me to respond right away? Wasn't a man allowed some time to process news like this?

Even as I think a bitter _apparently not,_ taking my hand through my hair, I know it doesn't matter. I didn't even _ask_ her to marry me. I just told her that we'd do it---God, no wonder she left my ass. I fucked up. Something that becomes more and more apparent as she refuses to answer my calls. 

Shit! Where could she have gone? Where does she have to go? I'm the only person she knows here---not true, of course. She's from here! It's me who doesn't have anyone! Oh fuck!

The drive to Essex. Of course, she even told me about it, but somehow I wasn't able to connect that with her absence now, because, pathethically, I suppose I've been holding out hope that she wouldn't do something do drastic, so....real. I mean, fuck, she even bought me a plane ticket back to the States. She wanted me gone. She wanted us to be.... _apart._

_What else was she supposed to do? Stay here while she carries the child of a man who was grimly planning on an emergency wedding last minute?_

Good God, I've become my own Victorian mortality narrative. Fuck! I get in my car and speed my way to Essex, but I know even as I wince my way through all the speed traps that I'll be too late. Rey doesn't do anything by half-measures, and she has a plan for everything---whether it's arranging my hallway bookshelves or getting Silencer to switch to dry cat food.

There's bi way in hell she doesn't have a concrete plan for an escape. She made a spreadsheet to help her decide what to do about this pregnancy, for pity's sake. 

And even as I fruitlessly search the public parts of the small town, I can't help but admire her. Even her spreadsheets and escape routes. Even her spine of steel normally hidden behind schoolgirl enthusiasm and lush curves.

How could I have been so foolish as to let a woman like her slip through my fingers? 

*********

"Rey, thank fuck!"

I'm in my study, warm summer darkness pressing up against the windows and Silence lying sideways on my desk, watching me pace back and forth on the floor. As floor I can only pace because of Rey's hard work in organizing my research.

"Paul." Rey says quietly. 

I know it's early---the last three days ceaselessly calling and emailing. I've become something of an expert in checking the times of when she might possibly be getting up, especially after all the time she had spent here with me, but she sounds exhausted. Raspy, like she's been crying. The thought of burns a hole in my chest.

"I just---" I stop, searching for the right words to say. I'm still stunned she finally picked up the phone, and I don't want to say anything wrong. I don't want to scare her away again. "How are you? And the baby?"

"The baby is currently the size of a pomegranate seed," Rey says. "So I think it's fine."

She doesn't answer how she is, and she doesn't have to. Her voice says it all. 

"Rey, listen, I-I fucked up. I should have listened to you. I should have talked. I should have done everything differently." There's silence on the other end, and somehow I know it wasn't good enough, that she needs more. "I love you," I say. No. Plead. "I love you and I want you. And this baby. And I'll do anything to prove it to you."

"Are those the thing you think that you have to say?" she asks softly. Too softly, but I don't see the danger.

"Of course! Aren't they the thing that you need to hear?" A sharp breath, like a gasp. It sounds like a gunshot going off. "Rey? What did I say wrong? Tell me, _tell me_ what is is and I'll fix it, I swear to God."

"That's just it, don't you see?" she whispers. "I don't want this to be about what you think you should do. I don't want you to leave your research. I don't want you to marry me if you are only doing it out of some kind of half-baked obligation of honor." 

I sputter a little at that, but clearly, she's not done yet and I listen---God, do I listen hard and good and long.

"And I especially don't want you to give up the professor games. How could I, when they make me feel more alive than I've ever felt? When they're a part of _you_ , and I love every part of you?"

The burning in my chest is a fire now, an inferno, and it's searing my very soul. "I love you too, Rey. Don't you see that's why I'm willing to give up anything to be with you?"

"And don't you see that's why I can't let you?" Her voice wavers, and I know that she's close to years now, if she's not already crying. Damn this distance, this small distance between us! I tighten my hand around my phone as if I can pull her back to me through the tiny device in my hand. "I want you just as you are, Paul," she continues. "And I refuse to be the reason you ruin your life. I'm so sorry that Jyn made you feel like you didn't deserve a child of a future because of the things you like in bed, but dammit, Paul, if you can't see how absurd that is after all these years, then I don't know how to make you."

Defensiveness wells up in my throat. "It's not absurd. It's reality. People like me can't have families: that's why I have to change."

"But money isn't an issue, so you shouldn't need to change jobs, and there's no bloody law that says we have to be married to have a child together. And there's certainly no law that says people can't have playful sex after they have a baby. You're inventing this new version of yourself that's wholly unnecessary, and it's a new version that I don't want. I love you how you are, and I refuse to be the excuse for you to hurt yourself,"

She takes a deep breath, and it trembles enough that I know she's truly crying now. God, I want to be there and make those tears disappear from her eyes. I just want to hold her, love her, be with her.

"I love you, Paul, but I deserve more than being a duty. I deserve the man I love--- _as he is_ \---choosing me because he's happy to choose me. Not because he feels forced to because there's just no other way out of it." 

She hangs up, and the sudden silence on the other end might kill me, save for one thing. I understand completely now. She isn't upset that I hadn't acted happy enough. She wants to save me from the mire of self-loathing I've been in ever since Jyn left me.

And for the first time in years, I not only want to save myself, but I recognize that I don't have to. I didn't love Jyn in any real measure, and I've been a fool to let her words foster and slowly infect me like a deadly poison. If Rey will have me as a crabby scholar who delights in taking her over my knees, then what's what she will get.

And to hell with all the rest. It's time to do the right thing---it's time for me to do the right thing and win back my girl and my family. _She's_ my family---she and the baby are _my_ family and I'll be damned if I lose that a second time around. 


	17. Chapter 17

REY JOHNSON

_Whoosh-whoosh-whoosh-whoosh-whoosh._

I blink at the screen next to me. Everything just looks like a swirl of static, except for the tiny spot at the middle. "Is that sound the heartbeat?" I ask.

The ultrasound tech smiles at me. "Is it. The baby's doing just fine."

I let out a long breath of relief. In the handful of days since Paul's phone call, I've had light, persistent cramping---nothing too scary, but my new nurse-midwife wanted to make absolutely sure everything was progressing well all the same.

I stare over at the the little bean on the ultrasound monitor, as if it will make the storming thoughts inside my head clearer. As if it will loosen the painful knot in my chest.

It doesn't, but I still feel a spike of mind-boggling awe--as well as a spike of regret. Paul should be here right now. Paul should be here to see his child. Even if there's no future in it for us, he deserves that much at least.

"I'm going to run these images over to your midwife and make sure that she doesn't want anything else," the ultrasound tech says, snapping off her gloves and taking some printouts away from the machine. "Just stay here and I'll be right back."

As if I'm going anywhere naked below the waist and still slicked up with the bluish lube they used for the ultrasound wand. I consider reaching for my phone as the door closes behind the tech, but I decide against it. I'll only be crushed by how blank it is; Paul hasn't tried to call or contact me at all since we last spoke on the phone.

I close my eyes against the sudden burn, feeling so stupid. This is what I wanted, right? Dignity, distance, all the stuff that sounds so good in theory and _Cosmo_ articles. In real life, however, dignity just fucking sucks. 

My eyes are still closed as the tech comes back in the room, and I take a deep breath, preparing to act the part of a chipper young mom again. It's been a little embarrassing, being here alone, knowing the front desk girls and the clucking, brusque nurses are all forming their own opinions of me, but it's nothing that I can't handle, right? Right.

But before I can open my eyes to greet the tech again, I feel a blunt finger tracing the narrow leather band of my wristwatch. "Always the watch," a wry, deep male voice says. "Even now." 

He'll never stop being so fucking handsome, will he? The unkempt shadow of a beard on that square jaw matches his tousled hair perfectly, and even the sleepless smudges under his eyes only serve to set off the unfairly long eyelashes and the hypnotically colored eyes.

That sensual mouth is currently twisted in a smile so autocratically and perfectly Paul Sevier that I could cry.

"You're here," I say pointlessly.

He settles a hand over my lower stomach, but his eyes never leave my face once. "I'm here," he affirms. 

"But..." I don't even have the rest of the words to finish my objection, although it's not really an objection. 

Even with everything between us, seeing him is like swallowing down pure excitement. A hot flush starts to creep up my cheeks. He notices, his smile becoming less dry and more tender.

He brushes along my blush-stained cheeks with the back of a finger. "But nothing, sweetheart. You were right. About everything."

"Everything?" I ask, suddenly finding myself uncertain in the trance of his beautiful dark eyes.

"I wish you hadn't left," he admits. "I wish that you would have told me about the baby the moment you found out....but I understand now why you didn't. It took you calling me absurd before the truth became clear to me."

"I didn't call you _absurd,_ " I clarify quickly. "Just your weird self-loathing."

He laughs, the act transforming his expression into that boyish, happy face that I love so much. "Okay, fine then. It took you calling my self-loathing absurd for me to understand." He sobers a little, his hand splaying so nice and warm on my belly. "And I think I do understand now. I never wanted you to feel like a duty, Rey. I want you because I want you. And if you'll have me the way that I am---" his eyes meet mine---"then I'm, all yours."

I search his expression. "So you aren't going to insist on marriage?"

"No, I want to marry you, but only if you're willing?" The look on his face is fierce and loving. "And I'll be there as long as it takes to make you willing." 

"And you're not going to quit your writing and go take a teaching job that you hate?"

"No."

"And you'll still be a spanky professor with me when we're alone together?"

He rolls his eyes at the word _spanky,_ but a smile tugs at his lips. "And I'll still be a spanky professor with you when we're alone together, yes." 

I finally allow myself to grin. "Then that's all that I can ask for."

The tech opens the door, making a coo of surprise when she sees Paul. "Oh hello. Is this Daddy?" she asks, bustling back to the machine.

"Yes," Paul and I say at the same exact time. 

And we manage to sway the tech into showing us a few more minutes of the baby, even though technically she doesn't need to, and I soak in every moment of Paul's reserved expression made open and awed with wonder as he watches his baby's heart pulse on the screen. 

It's not until we're leaving the office together, several glossy prints of our baby in hand, when I nudge his arm with my shoulder and say, "You're Daddy now."

His gorgeous mouth hooks up at the corner. "Sometimes I'll be, Miss Johnson. But when we're all alone, I'm still the Professor."

I think I might just float away with happiness. "Yes, sir." I say, and I'm rewarded with a kiss that steals my breath right out of my mouth and promises all sorts of dirty, spanky things to come. 

As long as I'm a very, _very_ good girl. I think I can handle that, can't I?


	18. Chapter 18

PAUL SEVIER

_One Year Later...._

Warm summer air blows through the study windows, ruffling my papers. I mumble a frustrated oath, clapping a hand over the pile and trying to ignore Rey, who is finishing up her assignment using completely digitized materials and is visibly smug about it.

Ever since she decided to go to library school in nearby Sheffield, we've been sharing my study, and she'd never stopped being fussing about my affinity for paper. Or rather, the way the paper I work with tends to clump into piles and stacks and turn our neatly organized study into a warren of discarded books. 

The breeze blows again, toying with her hair and fluttering the edges of her blouse, drawing my eyes down to her chest. The baby and nursing have blown out Rey's buxom shape, transforming her girlishly curvy body to something ripe and irresistible. 

Looking at her now makes me feel distinctly barbarian-like; I can't catch sight of those lush, milk-heavy breasts or those suggestively wide hips without wanting to throw her over my shoulder and carry her off to some remote tower and mate with her until we both can't move anymore.

I consider doing that right now--sans tower, of course---when a small squeak draws my attention. I look over to the small cot next to my desk, where two chubby waving fists and slowly kicking legs alert me that my little man is finally awake. 

Rey starts to stand, but I beat her to him, scooping up the squishy bug in my arms and kissing his thick, silky crown of hair. 

At just three months old, Ben--named after my mother's dearest friend---looks almost all my child: his so blue at birth now changing into a dark brown, his pointed chin, and even his little frowns and scowls are all mine.

But the hair is all from his mother, and I find myself so fucking enamored sometimes with the idea that he's been created uniquely and solely from me and the woman that I love.

The woman who's going to be my wife. After our conversation and my botched attempt at marrying her the first time, I decided to take no risks with my second approach, and in a very Rey-ish move, I made a plan. Part of the plan was establishing where we would live and where she would go to school, because I can live anywhere, really, and I knew that she'd want to be close to her father.

I let her choose every step of the way, reminding her that I'd love her and stay with her no matter what. 

She chose the cottage and the river and then being a campaign for emotional warfare to convince her father to find a job here near us. A campaign that was successful. 

He lived a mere ten minutes away from his grandson now. The other part of the plan was to simply enjoy the process of having Benjamin. I didn't want to rush her or pressure her when she seemed so happy and alight with his impending arrival, so I decided to wait until after his birth to settle this once and for all.

Rey's mine. She's been mine from the moment I covered my body with hers and slid inside her. Hell, she's been mine since the moment she stumbled into me on a rainy London night.

And I have absolutely no intention of letting her go. Ever. Rey finishes up her work while I tend to Ben, and by the time she's finished, he's ready to nurse. I sit at the edge of my desk and watch as she props her feet up on a pile of books and cradles our son to her breast.

I watch appreciatively, happily, because she's a vision like this---her hair in tumble-down waves over her shoulder and her beautiful face bent in tender care....and her perfect breast available to view. 

As if hearing my thoughts, my son puts a flexing hand over her breast as if to lay claim. I smile, dropping a kiss on his head as I get up to prepare for this afternoon.

 _Message well received_ , _little man,_ I think with amusement. _She's all yours....for now._

But after the nods off into his habitual milk coma and we lay him down in his nursery upstairs, I lead Rey back to the study, because for the next hour, she's all mine. And I intend on using that time very well. 

The moment I sit back down at my desk and say, "Come here, Miss Johnson," my cock swells against my trousers in Palovian response. 

And it swells even more as see the rampant evidence of her desire stamped all over her body---nipples like hard little bullets, cheeks stained pink, and her even, white teeth biting into her lower lip.

"Yes, Professor," she murmurs, coming toward me with a smile she can't quite hide.

"I'm afraid that you've been a really bad girl," I tell her sternly, "and the time has come to do something about it."

"I haven't been a bad girl," she protests as she finally reaches me, and I hear the real umbrage in her voice---my Rey is someone who always wants to be a good girl, the teacher's pet, and even though she knows it's a game, she still can't stifle the eager schoolgirl inside her who wants to please me entirely.

Her puzzled little frown ins only half-faked.

"I'm a good girl, I promise."

"I don't think so," I say, giving her the steely teacher-ish glare that makes her melt every single time. "We need to have a little talk about your behavior, Miss Johnson. And about the consequences that follows."

I stand up, and her teeth sink back into her lip in a display of contrition. Heat pools at the base of my spine, and I have to consciously control my breathing and slow it down. _Fuck,_ how I need this game. How I need her to play with. Only her, for the rest of my life. 

"Do you think I haven't noticed what you've been doing to get my attention, Miss Johnson? The staying after class? The 'extra studying' in my office? And do you think I haven't noticed how you shamelessly display your body for me?"

Deep hazel green eyes peer up at me through, dark fluttering lashes. "I wasn't doing it on purpose," she breathes. "I promise, sir." 

I slide my hand into the loose, silky hair at the nape of her neck. "I think it was on purpose," I say coldly. "I think you are deliberately trying to provoke me. And I think you're about to learn how far you can provoke a man before he acts."

"Acts?" she asks, blinking up at me.

I yank her close enough that she can feel the hot column of my cock against her belly. "That's right, Miss Johnson. It's time for you to face the consequences of your misbehavior." 

And then I bend her over my desk. I'm trembling. I'm almost always trembling at this point, the sheer fucking filthiness of it throbbing deep in my belly and shuddering heat all the way up to the tip of my leaking cock.

Something about this game we play rocks me to my core, makes me feel like every time is the first time, and the fact that I can play it with someone who loves it as much as I do is incredible. I'm humbled by it every single fucking time we play. 

She looks up at me over my shoulder, delivering her most innocent pout. "But, sir, I won't be bad any longer. I'll be good, I swear."

I flip up her skirt, exposing a round behind and a sweet pussy that are completely bare. No underthings at all. "This doesn't look like you have any plans to be good anytime soon," I say darkly, giving her pussy a hard cup. "I think you're lying. I think you can't help yourself, and you're going to keep this pussy wet and open for me whenever I'm around because you can't stand not having me fuck you, hmm?"

She grinds down against my hand, chasing the pressure and rolling her head along her folded forearms. Fuck, she feels so damn good.

"Answer me, girl? Are you going to start behaving now?" I time my question with the dirty, probing slide of one finger deep into her heat, and she mewls at me.

"No, Professor, I'm so sorry. I just can't help it...."

"Then you'll have to face the consequences of your behavior." I say, injecting my voice with as much grimness as I can muster through all the lust currently pounding through my veins. "How do you stop me, Miss Johnson?"

"Red," she moans, whimpering in protest as I remove my finger. "But please don't ever stop."

 _Thwack!_ The first stinging slap across her ass makes her jolt against the desk, one of her bare little feet kicking up reflexively. I move my own feet around hers, enjoying the picture we make very much---the trouser fabric against bare legs and the rumpled plaid waves of her skirt, the expensive leather of my shoes against the adorable red-painted toes and pale skin of her feet.

I give her another quick slap and then sit back down in my chair. "Over my knee, Miss Johnson. I need to make sure you're not getting too comfortable." 

The look she cuts me is a prism of all the things that I love about our game, about our life together. It's fear and arousal and the distinct slice of rueful affection, and it hardens my cock at the same time it softens my heart. I love her, and I love the way we fit together as I pull her over my lap, as she drops a soft kiss on my forearm, and I give her thigh a quick, reassuring squeeze before we disappear back into our little game.

I pull her skirt up to her waist and spank her until she squirms. I spank her until her legs start kicking up and I have to trap them under my leg to keep punishing her. 

I keep it nice today, my palm working over a liberal area and striking just hard enough to burn but not hard enough to truly hurt. And then once she's nice and pink, I part her legs to inspect her pussy.

"You're wet," I declare harshly. "Shamefully wet. I don't think you've learned your lesson at all." 

"Maybe not," she gasps as my inspecting hand starts rubbing at her cunt. "I think I might need more punishment."

"A shame," I say, picking up her and bending her back over the desk. With one hand, I keep her bent over the desk while my other hand fumbles with my pants to release my aching erection. "I had such high hopes that I could turn you back into a good girl."

"I can be a good girl starting right now," she begs, lifting up on her tiptoes and bringing her wet, flushed open level with my cock.

I rub my tip against it, enjoying the heat and the slick kiss of her flesh against mine, enjoying her needy moans even more. And finally, finally, after shoving the turgid head into the small seam and lodging myself there, I thrust home. 

She's so tight, so hot, that static fuzzes at the edges of my vision. "I've suddenly changed my mind," I say breathlessly. "You are a very good girl. Fucking utterly perfect." 

********

She tosses her hair over her shoulder as she sends me the kind of saucy look no actual good girl could ever must. "I-I like it when you fuck me, Professor," she says, and she pushes back against me to prove her point. "You make me feel so good."

I give her a stinging spank and then reach in front of her to add my fingers to her pleasure, knowing how she likes the pressure of my touch on her clit as I fuck her tight opening from behind. And it doesn't take her long like this, with me riding her against the desk, and my touch on her intimate secrets, and she cums with a surprised wail, clenching so hard around my cock that I very nearly lose it.

But I cling on, by fingernails and teeth, desperate to execute my plan. Because one thing's become clear to me over the past year, and it's how much we need each other like this and how afraid Rey was of losing this part of me.

So I need to prove to her now that she'll never lose it, that it's part of our love now and forever. After her peak subsides, I reach over and slide a piece of notebook paper in front of her.

"I forgot to mention this very important assignment," I say, and I see her glance at it briefly and then back to me, as if she expects it only have the usual _red means stop_ scrawled across, since that's usually how I check in with her during our games.

But this time it says something completely different. I see the moment she realizes this, the moment her head dips back to read the paper again, and she freezes underneath me now-leisurely stroking hips.

 _I love you,_ the paper says. _Will you marry me? Will you be my wife and let me be your professor?_

"Paul?" she says, and her voice is filled with tears.

I pull out enough that I can turn her around and guide her back onto the desk, on her back this time, and I crawl over her, entering her with a wet, welcome shove.

"I love you. And I want you as you are," I murmur into her mouth, punctuating my words with deep, stroking kisses. "Will you have me? Just as I am?"

"Yes," she says, her tears running off her smiling cheeks. "Yes, I want you. Yes, I'll have you."

"So it's settled then," I say, feeling like I've swallowed sunshine and grinning like a completely idiot. "You're mine."

She gives me a challenging look at this statement. "And you're mine too."

"Just so."

And when we cum together, hot and messy and slick on top of my desk, surrounded by the library she built and with our baby sleeping upstairs, it's not the beginning of something incredible---the beginning happened on a drenching night over a year ago.

But it's a confirmation. A confirmation and a conclusion, and for me being the professor. I have to admit the woman underneath me has taught me more than I ever could have imagined.

I couldn't have planned the lesson better myself, although as we start kissing and grinding our way to a second round, I decide that there's no way I can ever admit that to her. I am the professor in this house, after all. 


End file.
